December 5, 2007

How I see the Fundamental English Class – So far

Hi – I want to discuss my thoughts on my Fundamental English class to this point in the year. “Interesting” is the first thing I would say. We have gone fromrote learning out of the “book” with a heavy emphasis on read, do vocab worksheets and then test, to learning to integrate technology into the class. This has not been without frustrations (programs not doing what we expect, or “this is cool” from the students, to me finding this great new program and then try it out without giving enough attention to the “how” to use it.

But I have dedicated the 2nd quarter to learning how to integrate technology into the class and believe that we are making progress on it. There are so many things I want us to do, but we have to create a base of knowledge to move on to other uses of technology. I strongly believe that I need to move even more into the technology in order to help prepare my students for the “Flat world”.

I couldn’t have done this without Mr. Suttie’s help, he has been a fantastic resource and has guided me through my frustrations and helped me on how to integrate this “stuff” :).

Now I plan to focus on using the following programs for the rest of the quarter, Gaggle.net for email, Microsoft Word and Google Docs for word processing/collaboration, Quizlet for online quiz/study, Plato (if I can ever get my classes setup), EdHelper for paper based worksheets/tests, Blogs (I still have to figure out which blog I want to use, so I am going to try this one out and see how it works) and either Wikispaces or ZohoWiki as my Wiki space.