Week 6 Wiki Reflection

I will certainly plan on including a wiki in my future classroom. I love the interactive nature of it and the fact that the readers/students can participate in the content. This are the first courses (Tech and Learning Theories) that I have taken where the syllabus, "handouts", outside sources, and working docs are all on the wiki. I found it incredibly easy to access information and having the ability to create links on the fly gave the instruction so much more freedom in formulating course content. I would like to have that same flexibility with my future students.

I think students in general would really enjoy creating their own wikis. For many special education students, pencil-to-paper work is a huge challenge. Wikis would be a great to assessment tool and would facilitate learning for many of these students. In addition, it gives the students some autonomy in their learning, being able to access sites they are interested in and link to all kinds of information. It really is portfolio learning which is a great method of differentiation.

As usual with my technology projects, the nuts and bolts of the tools wore me down so the content suffered. I especially felt that with my wiki. I feel there were many things I wanted to include but just ran out of steam and time. However, the good news is that I truly feel that this was a course I took away a huge body of knowledge, even if that was represented in my work. By the time I got to the end of the project, and was up against it, I was just beginning to feel as though I was getting a handle on my skills. While this didn't bode well for most of the work I turned it, I do feel as though I am taking skills with me into my own classroom and I feel that perhaps in this case, that matters more.

I came into this course a little intimidated and very, very unsure of my tech skills. I left realizing that my fears were proved correct!! Seriously, I developed a thick skin, always a good thing, and I persevered. My comfort level is improving and I look forward to the day when I can catch up my tech skills to my creativity and really produce some amazing things. At the very least, I definitely have a new found appreciated for technology in the classroom; in fact, its hard for to me to imagine good teaching without it in today's world.