Week 8: June 24th- 27th 

Last week of class! I can honestly say that this course has taught me a lot about technology and its resources. Regardless of if I use it in my classroom or not, it has helped me to recognize the importance of technology in education as a whole. This will be something that I can do with my children in the future and help them to perform better as students.  I also learned a lot about resources that I can use to be a better teacher. My blog and website, even though they are not likely to be used in my center due to the groups of people we work with, I know that I CAN use them. Also, I liked Prezi a lot and I learned to use basic functions on my computer I hadn't thought about using before. Such as MovieMaker on my pc, voice recordings, etc. Not the basic things I would use on my computer (or even knew it had!) 

This week we had to create a tutorial about a Wed 2.0 resource we wanted. The one I chose was Prezi. I decided to focus on Prezi because I learned a lot from it, and I tried to incorporate it into my Course Sites. I think Prezi is a great Wed 2.0 resource because it helps break down concepts that the average person making a presentation wouldn't know. For instance, your work looks a lot more "graphic" and has more transitions, videos, media, etc than basic PowerPoint because it has been done for you. My tutorial is very simple and it would be for people who are starting to just use Prezi. I learned a lot about Prezi myself, and I just taught how to navigate the site and discussed why I thought it was such a great tool for classrooms. I think it is a great assignment for older students to be able to do as a way to present projects, ideas, even brainstorm! I thought about myself when I made this tutorial and people like myself that would need to have Prezi broken down for them. 

I also found an article about the integration of Prezi and other educational Web 2.0 resources into the classroom : http://www.njea.org/news-and-publications/njea-review/february-2011/prezi-presentations-engage-and-motivate-students

I really enjoyed getting to know the classmates and all that you guys also taught me! You guys provided me with knowledge about different things to incorporate into my class. I hope to continue to educate myself about technology in the future. I also want to thank our professor for all her help during this course :) 

Best,
Christina