It's all starting to become clearer now!

Week Three and Four of ED3441 have been really helpful in helping make sense of how to create Blogs and Wikis that we are to do for our assessment. Before this I had no idea how to create either of those. Now I have successfully created a blog and have discovered how to invite followers. I was very excited the first time I discovered I had followers. While this may seem like an easy task for some, it is my first experience with blogs so I am still yet to learn the finer details of them.

Discovering how to create a Wiki was the next major milestone I have achieved so far in the first four weeks of this subject. One Max first mentioned that we had to create our own Wiki for our Assessment 2, my first thought was there is no way I can create a Wiki! I don’t even know what a Wiki is! After this weeks tute I have now made the first step in creating my Wiki by signing up for a Wiki and inviting fellow ED3441 students to be my followers. I didn’t even know before the tute that you could have followers. Hopefully, in the weeks to come, I can further develop my knowledge about Wikis and learn how to add content to the pages.

My experiences so far!

My name is Rachel Mills.  I am a 3^rd year Primary Education students and have just completed my prac at St Anthony’s Catholic College in a grade 5 class.  During this time I was exposed to a small amount of various ICT’s.  The school does not have any permanent smartboards, but during my final week there, my classroom was given a movable interactive whiteboard.  Even though the software wasn’t installed yet, I was still able to use it as a data projector and type the answer of the worksheet up on the computer as we were working through the activity as a whole class.  Once a week, the class had one and a half hours in the computer lab to work on assignments.  During my time there the students were using Microsoft Publisher to create a web page and feature article.

My personal experience with ICT’s is very limited.  I have never been technology savvy.  The main reason why I shy away from using ICT’s would be because I am scared of them.  I don’t like not having a firm grasp of how to use them so instead of learning through experimentation I stick to what I know.  Although once I am shown how to use a program, I am confident to continue to use.  I am just not good at experimenting with new programs on my own.

I am really excited about the opportunity to complete ED3441 as part of my education degree.  I have a number of goals that I hope to achieve during this subject.  I would like to know what a Wiki is, I want to become a little less afraid of experimenting with different programs and I would like to be able to learn new ways of incorporating ICT’s effectively in the classroom.  I am looking forward to achieving all these goals so I can be a more proactive ICT teacher.