Final Post

This class has taught me many things that I think will be useful to me in the future. It was so nice to see and learn about things that I can use to teach and in my daily life as well.

It was so nice to learn how to create a blog and insert hyperlinks and pictures to that blog. This was my first time to create a blog and I thought that it was very interesting and can be very useful if I use it as a teaching tool. I learned so many things from the research that we had to do for our blogs. I thoroughly enjoyed the video of Randy Pausch's last lecture and the "Did You Know" video that we had to write about. I also learned so much about the ALEX and ACCESS programs that I didn't know. It may sound sad, but I had never used iTunes or the iStore before I had to in this class. I always just expected my husband to take care of things like this for me. I also found many websites that I will use and I really liked the site by Alice Christie.

I created a podcast for the first time. I did not enjoy this project very much because it makes me nervous to know that what I say at that moment will be saved and put on the Internet for everyone to hear. However, I think that this can be useful and was interesting to learn about. I realize that I may use this tool one day to share information and I am glad that I learned how to do this.

I had previously learned how to do a spreadsheet in Excel, but I did learn how to do new things with it and it was nice to review and refresh the things I had learned before. I learned how to use more of the tools that it offers and learned how to make graphs with the information that I include in the spreadsheet. My husband uses Excel to do our household budget, so it will be interesting to help use this tool at home.

I learned how to use Google Docs Slide show and many other things about iGoogle. I created a slide show presentation in Google docs and with the Microsoft Office version. I have created a Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentation before, but I also learned about other features that this offers. I liked using the Microsoft Office PowerPoint better than the one on Google Docs, but definitely can see how it is easier to share documents and PowerPoint presentations using Google Docs. The slide show presentation was a little more difficult because it was slower and would "freeze" up easily.

I have made many Word documents, but it was nice to learn another way to use it in the classroom. We created documents by combining information from different websites into one document. I think that this will be a great way to share information from the Internet with our classes. We also learned how to insert pictures, hyperlinks, and make it look neat and organized. I think that I knew how to do all of this, but seeing it all used together to make a single document will help me when trying to do this for my class.

As I mentioned in my blog previously, I have taken this class before when I was in Undergraduate school several years ago. They allowed me to take this again to renew my teaching certificate and I now see why. So many things have changed because of our fast changing world and the Internet. I thought that I would only learn a few new things, but I learned SO much more! Only a few things were the same as when I took the course before and even they have changed some. I enjoyed taking this class and learned many things that I will use. I can not think think of anything that I would have liked to learn or think should have been covered because it contained so much more than I expected. I was very challenged by the material and this course definitely exceeded my expectations!