Well, here I am at the end of my fourth class. It seems the time so far in this Master’s program has flown by; I have already learned so much. I wonder what I will be like, how much my teaching will change by January 2010 when I complete this degree.

I learned a lot in this class about blogging; I learned that I don’t like it too (it’s too much like journalling, and I have never been able to keep up with that consistently for very long). We didn’t do much with wikis, even though we were supposed to (our professor couldn’t figure out how to get it to work in airset so we could edit) and I am a little disappointed. I kind of understand what they are because of Wikipedia, but I think experiencing it for my self and actually being involved with creating one would have enabled me to understand the process a lot better.

I did my first research paper in about twenty years. Having the internet at my disposal made this project a lot easier. I enjoyed learning about the evolution of the iPod (my new favorite classroom toy since the parents of the kids in my class gave me one for my birthday). I enjoyed the walk down memory lane as I researched the predecessors of the iPod remembering my own Sony walkman, boom box, and CD players. I learned a lot about where the vision for the iPod came from and how Apple developed it. I watched the 2001 Keynote address that Steve Jobs gave when he introduced the first iPod. He had such vision and predicted that the iPod would be the most popular mP3 player on the market. The man is a genius!

My favorite part of the class was learning about and doing the podcasts. I made two audio and one video podcast for this class, and since I already am familiar with and use podcasts in my kindergarten class, I began thinking of ways I could have the children help make podcasts in our classroom. This past week, the children were learning about plants, and I gave the children the digital camera and sent them out with an adult with the task of taking a picture of a plant they liked on our campus. It was interesting to see what the children chose to take pictures of. Later that day, they thought about the plant they took a picture of and wrote about it in their journal. Next week, I plan to record the children as they read what they wrote in their journal about “their” plant. I will record in GarageBand and use the photos the children took to complete the podcast. I will post the finished podcast on the website where I post the children’s photos for the parents to enjoy.

One final piece of information I have received and will continue to use in my classroom is video streaming. It is amazing to have all these videos, songs, and photos at my fingertips. During our plants unit, I found a video of “Jack and the Beanstalk” that I showed to the children. I am looking forward to seeing what I can find to enhance the curriculum this month as we begin our study of animals.