As this week I was unable to attend the lecture and as we approach the due date of our Wikis I have decided to reflect back on my journey so far through ED3441. It is interesting to see if I have met any of my goals for the subject, or if it has been what I expected it to be like.
My main initial goal was to become more confident in experimenting with different ICTs that are unfamiliar to me. I feel that through each week of being exposed to different ICTs in our tutes my confidence has slowly started to increase. One program I particularly enjoyed playing with was Audacity. I had heard of this program before but didn’t actually know what it was or how to use. Max showed us how to download a simple music file from the Internet onto the software. From there we were able to cut bits of sound from the music piece, we explored mixing two pieces of sound together and generally just had a play around to discover the different features of Audacity. Previously I would have never had the confidence to do this and brushed it off as being too hard, but through this exploration, Max helped me see just how easy it is to play around with new programs.
Has anyone else achieved the goals that we set for ourselves way back in week one? I would love to hear if you have!
Throughout the subject I have also learnt new ways of incorporating ICTs into my classroom. I didn’t realise there were so many suitable tools accessible to us at just a click of our computer mouse! Great programs web tools I hope to use in my class lessons one day include Bubbl.us, Wordles, Scratch, Flickr, the list just goes on and on!! I have only had limited chances to play around with the tools so far but every time I do I see just valuable they can be to teachers! 280slide is another awesome web tool that students can use. Instead of just creating a powerpoint presentation using Microsoft Office, students can create a powerpoint which they can then share with everyone via their own personal wiki, a class wiki etc. This way tasks can seem more authentic to students as they are just not doing work just for the teacher. They are doing work that everyone can see.
Good luck to everyone in the coming weeks as we all frantically try to finish creating our Wikis!
