My Final Blog

Farewell to all! :) I have learned so much in this course and I will go through some of my favorite and not so favorite tools...

For starters, I love everything that Google offers. I had no idea there were so many tools in the Google world. I have told so many other teacher friends about the cool applications Google has, and I am the biggest proponent for Google documents. I disliked doing group projects in school because no one ever took initiative to get the project going except me. Plus I or one other person would do most of the work while the other group members simply got credit. :) Now, with Google documents, it is a live document where students can see what other group members have done. Even cooler is that the teacher can go on the document and see how many times each student went on the site and do what amount of work. Now, not only can a student do their own work, they don't have to worry about doing someone elses portion of the work. Plus the teacher wont have to listen to students bicker about who did nothing and try and grade based on hearsay...they can simply view it!

Now, Blogger...I love the fact that you can make a blog for free, but I'm not sure about implementing this into my classroom. It is all outside classroom work, and it is hard to get students to do their homework already, so I'm not too sure about this. However, I would be open to doing it in my classes, because maybe I'll be surprised and see that the students would rather do a blog then regular paper and pencil homework.

Now, Jing...I love love love Jing!! It is so useful. I will definitely use this in the classroom. I will use as a tool for students who were absent and missed what the assignment was. My mom is a teacher and I showed her Jing, and she has already used it in her classroom!

Google voice...what an awesome concept! I would definitely implement this in the classroom because I want to be a hands-on teacher that is available to students and parents. With Google voice, I can be there and not use my everyday cell phone number... how great is that!

QR codes...I really liked these. I would love to use these in the classroom as bell work when the students first come into class.

YouTube...I would definitely have students use YouTube as a way of doing class presentations.

Google sites...I believe this site is a great project idea for students. However, due to the State Standards and pacing guide, I feel that it would be difficult to implement this into the classroom. This type of assignment would have to be an at home project, hoping that the students wil actually do it. But like I saud before, the students may rather do homework in this technology form rather than paper and pencil form.

Overall, I have learned so much from this course and will use many of this resources not only in the classroom, but for personal use as well.