Reflections on Learning #1

Throughout this course I have had the opportunity to interact and collaborate with many new people, learn about the many aspects of online learning and am now better able to understand what type of learner I am. We have had the chances to interact with a variety of different tools that I think will prove useful as an education professional. I came into this class with a less than positive view about online learning. Now that we are halfway through the course, my outlook has changed. I truly see the value of a well organize e-learning environment. While I do not want all of my learning to take place online, I feel much more confident in my abilities as an online learner.

I feel that this course has really demonstrated the how to create a functioning community in an online setting. There have been a huge variety of activities of all type that I feel really contributed to my engagement in the course. I like that we have a mixture of different sources to learn from (movies, articles, classroom discussions, collaboration, journals, etc.). I have also really enjoyed learning about Web 2.0 tools and Social Networking in the K-12 setting. I am a firm believer that when we have so many great tools at our disposal, we should take full advantage of them in supporting student learning. It really is essential that we introduce these tools so that we can teach our students to utilize them properly and safely. They will learn about them, but without our help they might get into unsafe situations.

I find Web 2.0 tools to be incredibly useful. The collaborative features of Web 2.0 tools is one of the most important aspects that we can apply in the K-12 setting. I have chosen to use a combination of Wikispaces and a discussion forum for my final project. Wikispaces is free, easy to use and can be collaborated on by anyone you choose. Wait a minute, that describes numerous Web 2.0 tools! One of the tools I would like to use in my initiative is screencasting. Screencasting is an incredibly effective (and easy) way to provide professional development to teachers. An activity that will be a part of my initiative is to have my participants create a screencast related to assistive technology tools on the Internet.