My MD400 Experience

I signed up for this class expecting to learn about technologies that I had heard about and peripherally experienced but never really understood. I think that expectation was more than met. I feel comfortable using the technologies that we have used for digital imagery, blogs, wikis, digital story creation and podcasting. Am I an expert? No. Will I use them in a classroom if they fit? Absolutely! The scary thing is that what we have learned only scrapes the surface. There is so much more to each of these technologies. So many options for their use that can be explored. Where will I find the time to go into more depth about them? And how quickly will new options replace those we have learned? How many new products will come into the marketplace that just might be perfect for classroom use? I will keep my eyes and ears open to what is going on with technology but my goal will be to look for the technology that best adds value to my teaching style and subject matter and focus on that. If I can accomplish that, I will be happy.
I also came away from this class with an appreciation for how many resources were provided on Jenn Cirino's and the MD400 website. Don't ever take those sites down! Throughout the class I kept going back to them to see what else I might not have explored.
I hope to share what I have learned with teachers that I know. I have talked to them throughout this class and they are excited to learn the basics of some of these tools and find ways to implement them in their classroom. As I say in my Ed Tech Philosophy digital story, educational technology needs to go viral. If we can adopt these things one teacher at a time, we will eventually be able to create that ideal vision of a technology not being a separate thing that gets considered for only a few or only a portion of our curriculum. It will be an integral part of how we teach. (Blog Post 12)