Loving Learning: Ms. Strong’s Blog

As the class ends I thought I would share some of my favorite links.  You can find some of them in my blog roll.  My favorite curriculum link is called Family Economics & Financial Literacy.  This is a website I use regularly with my Personal Finance class.  Another cool yet fun website I found is called BeFunky.com.  This is a great website for doing fun things with pictures so check it out.  Of the resources I acquired from this class perhaps Vuvox has been one of the most creative and fun.  My fellow classmates provided excellent resources as well.  I would say that Animoto was the most interesting website I acquired from a classmate.  I hope you enjoy.  It has been an amazing six weeks.

With the end of class approaching I began to ponder the possibilities. What were my expectations when I began the class and had I reached them? First, let me say that my ultimate goal was to obtain new (at least to me) ways to deliver my curriculum while attempting to captivate my students interest. A very tall order for today’s over stimulated teenagers for sure. I feel that I learned an abundant of new skills which I have already began to use. Let me just say that they are a work in progress. My Summer will be very busy. One thing I learned very quickly is that there is more out there than I could possibly ever learn and use. It is mind boggling for sure.

Wow!  The school year is ending fast.  Only a couple of weeks left and I have acquired all this new knowledge with Web 2.0 tools that I want to share with my students.  I guess I will have to wait until the Fall.  The big dilemma now is to learn it well over the Summer and turn it into interesting assignments.  I want to learn all the projects, wiki’s, podcasts, vuvox, del.icio.us, everything!!  Can I do it all?  I think I can.  However, it may involve taking the laptop to the lake, camping, in the backyard, etc.  Wish me luck. 

When the week began I wasn’t sure what projects I was going to do.  In fact, I wanted to do all of them for the experience, but time is a major factor.  As I started looking at the projects I realized some were obviously much more time consuming than others.  I ended up chosing to do the Wiki for a class project.  This is in the infancy stage and only time will tell how well it goes.  Keep your fingers crossed.

The second choice for my project was the video share.  Who knew there was so much out there.  I watched a lot of garbage, but eventually stumbled upon a number of videos that were appropriate for school use.  Now i just have to stop.  I have become addicted to looking for videos.  Therapy may be in order.

I have been to Hawaii several times, so why is it I haven’t heard the term Wiki before the past few weeks?  Probably because it is not a term that easily comes up in a conversation, unless of course you are talking about technology or education.  Regardless, I have come to develop a certain knowledge of Wiki’s.   While I am enjoying the process of developing a Wiki for a class project, I am a bit apprehensive about how it will be received by the class.  That being said, I am not one to back down from a challenge.  I say, jump in feet first and go for it!