Final thoughts on class...

Well, tomorrow is our last day of class. It has been a great class. I have learned a ton! I am sort of sad that I'm not returning to teach in the fall since I now have a ton of new ideas that I could try. I have, however, began "teaching" my friends the stuff that I have learned in the class so that they can use it next year! I have even passed along many of the resources on our class wiki to my friends.

My favorite part of the course was probably either learning to use Moodle or the podcasts. I definitely see the value in both, and I will definitely use both in the future! I wish that I would have had more time to learn more about them, but I will have to play around and teach myself more.

I also really enjoyed the asynchronous discussion. I didn't think I'd like the discussion part, but it has been a really good experience. I like the fact that I can read other's posts and take time to gather my thoughts before commenting. I feel that the discussions have been great (until for some reason this week...when it's my turn to facilitate and no one is discussing!). I don't think that I would have participated if the discussions were required just because I didn't see value in them before the class, but I'm glad I did. I will definitely use those types of chats when I return to teaching!

The hardest part of the course would have to be the wiki! I think it is a good resource, but I didn't have a whole lot to add. I wasn't incredibly knowledgeable about any of the topics on it, so I didn't feel that I had a lot to add. But I think it will be helpful in the future as I start to learn more!

Overall, it was a great course!

Podcast reflections...

I finally finished my podcast! Yeah! I must say that I could learn to love podcasting. It was so much fun creating mine... I just wish I had more time and I knew more about Audacity. Also, my voice has still not returned, so I sound a bit manly, but oh well...for my first podcast, I'd say it turned out pretty decent.

I think that having students create podcasts would be a PERFECT project for my speech class (if, that is, I was still teaching). I teach a unit on voice (rate, pitch, volume, pronunciation and articulation), and this would be a perfect speech to demonstrate voice. I also think that teachers creating podcasts for students to listen to could be very beneficial. I am interested to see how this takes off in k-12 education...

Website finished...podcast started

After all of the stress with creating my website, I think it turned out really well. I decided to use the Propaganda topic that I used in my webquest. I have a lot of good resources there...I just wish that I was returning to teach in the fall so I could use the material that I created. That is the hard part about being at home (don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade being at home with my girls for ANYTHING)...but I am learning so much this semester (and last), and I am anxious to implement it. Maybe I'll have to start teaching my 20 month olds about propaganda :)

I really like the asynchronous chats that we are using in this class. Letting my group see the things I have created and getting their feedback has been really helpful. Sometimes after you look at something for so long, you can't see the flaws with it, so having group feedback has been great for me!

Now that I am done with the website, I have begun my final project...the podcast. I am the most nervous about this project, because I have NO knowledge about podcasts. I've listened to one or two, but never created one. I decided to do my podcast on different propaganda techniques and example advertisements that use the techniques. It's actually really interesting! I have written the script and am ready to start recording. I have only one major problem...I lost my voice. I had a cold last week and I am feeling better now, but I still don't have my voice back. I'm hoping that it comes back soon or my group member will be SCARED of my podcast since my voice sounds really scary now :) We shall see...