Pulling it all Together

As this course/masters winds down, I am feeling much better about the technology skills that I have developed. I have always understood the importance of using technology in the classroom and use it daily with my students, but now I feel like I can think a bit more outside of the box. I have even considered looking into future masters programs that focus on technology so that I can continue to develop these skills. When reflecting back on the last year and a half working towards my masters I've realized that it has been the tech courses that I have learned the most in and have been able to take what I have learned back to my school and use it right away with my students.

Creating a website

When I realized this course required students to create a website my first thought was, "sweet! I always wanted one of those!" I've always admired those teachers who were "techy" and organized enough to update a website regularly to communicate and keep their students on track, so I finally get to be that person. Then came the process of actually creating the website, I became very overwhelmed and felt like it was never going to look like how I envisioned. Once I decided that I was going to create my website using Google Sites, I realized that the site it quite user friendly and with some playing around things were starting to look like how I wanted them to. I created the website for my resource classroom and included information about individualized program plans as well as transition planning. I like that I can now reference my website to easily convey updates to my parents. Overall my experience creating a website went smoothly, I'm really glad I took this course because otherwise I may never had created one.

Thoughts

As I work through this course I am really enjoying participating in group discussions. Initially, I felt nervous about being responsible for getting the conversation going, was my topic interesting to others? Would I be able to pose the questions in a way so that everyone in the group would understand what I meant? Would I be able to respond in a way to keep the conversation going? Then as we started discussing I felt even more interested in my topic than I was going into it. Everyone had very interesting perspectives since all of our experiences are so different. At the same time, it was very easy to relate to because at no matter what grade we still all encounter similar issues.

Intro Post for EDUC 5203

My name is Jill Martin and I am a Resource teacher at Sackville Heights jr. high. I am taking my Masters of Education in Inclusive Education at Acadia university and this EDUC 5203 tech course is the final course of my masters. I chose to take this course because I understand the value of technology and how beneficial it is for myself and my students but technology is not an area of strength for me. I am looking forward to learning from exploring on my own and from discussions with others about what is out there and what works best for others in their classrooms.