Lessons+Learned

I found this course to be extremely helpful in making me a better teacher. I felt apprehensive when I began this course because of my limited knowledge of computers. I had also seen other students' wikis in other classes and I was really impressed by them. I thought that anything that looked that appealing must be really difficult to do. As I began creating my own space, I was amazed by how simple it was to work with this program and by the wide range of applications for it. By creating our "We are the World" wiki collaboratively, I learned a great deal more about the program. One of the reasons I think that I learned to use wikis so quickly was the help I received from my group members. This is definitely something to keep in mind when I have my own classroom. For a problem-based learning model, wikis provide a great environment to help students explore and learn about a particular problem or issue. I believe the multi-media aspect of the wiki will help to keep students engaged and motivated to learn more. Exploring the Web 2.0 tools provided me with my first opportunity to take a close look at resources that are available online. I particularly liked MS photo story 3, Wikimedia Commons, and Rubistar. All three of these programs were really easy to use and will be great additions to my bag of tricks as a teacher. Doing this assignment also made me much more comfortable with the idea of exploring internet resources on my own in the future. Prior to this class, I thought that registering to use different internet resources would be extremely time consuming and I would have great difficulty learning them. I now know how simple and easy to learn many of these resources are.