Technology Skills Boot Camp Reflection

  When the Technology Skills Bootcamp project began, I remember being pleased when I reviewed the checklist.  It included many things I was familiar with.  I thought that will be helpful, because I could gain more practice on the tools I already knew about.  I thought I could also build more confidence in my skills.  Now that the project is completed, I think I gained more practice and confidence in my skills, along with much more.

  Looking back at my goals from the beginning of the semester, I feel that I have accomplished each of my goals.  I wanted to become as comfortable using Word as I am with Pages.  Now I find myself picking between the two depending on the task.  Before, I would have immediately chosen Pages without giving it much thought.  As for PowerPoint which is a tool I use regularly in my classroom, I found that by taking the time to add details such as hyperlinks and the use of master slides can help keep the transitions smooth.  For example, my class was using our daily PowerPoint on 75 phonograms, when the computer froze.  Once it restarted, it was easy for the students to return to the task, because the updated PowerPoint has hyperlinks for each slide and a master slide for them to guide the slide show.  In the past, I would have had to click through each slide to return to our spot.

  When the checklist mentioned databases and spreadsheets, I was eager to learn more about how I could use these as a professional.  The last time I had used a database was during my undergrad courses.  I was pleased to see how user friendly many of the databases were.  That was encouraging to continue the search for desired articles.  I hope to use them to help parents find useful articles on their child’s education.  Spreadsheets were something that I had seen many other teachers use.  Before this course, I was not as familiar with it, therefore I did not use it on a regular basis.  Now I see many ways that it can be used to organize and display students’ information.  I plan to take the time to use the charts and graphs to display students’ work and progress.  

  I am very confident in my graphic design skills, therefore I took the time in module six to build my skills in Smart Board Notebook.  I use my classroom Smart Board daily.  I have a few favorite activities in the files provided.  I was eager to have the time to explore more of the activities and pre-made lessons.  I would like to incorporate more Smart Board activities to enrich lessons now that have have seen what is available.  Before this course I used Smart Board Exchange to download many activities, however the activities objectives did not always match my own.  Now that I have explored the many possibilities and options Smart Board Notebook offers, I would like to build and develop more of my own activities to match my specific lesson objectives.  

  In conclusion, I found the Technology Skills Checklist a beneficial project.  I was able to gain confidence in many skills and tools.  I plan to continue to use these tools on a regular basis to further my learning and build my understanding of how the resources can be used in the classroom.  The project also allowed me to explore unfamiliar areas in technology.  My explorations led me to develop ideas of how I could use many of the resources in my classroom, from things to encourage learning in a lesson to making my classroom more organized and successful.  I gained a desire to incorporate even more technology in my classroom and I saw many possibilities to how I can do so.      

Module 6- Week 2

This week I was excited to explore the files provided by Notebook.  I have a few favorites that I have used before, but I have never had the chance to take the time to really explore and search the files.  I was amazed with all the options and pre-made activities.  Also I liked the provided ideas in the files that educators could build their own lessons and activities from the Notebook ideas and pre-made activities.  I was impressed by the tutorial videos that were available to watch.  I thought these were helpful.  They gave me many ideas for future lessons.  During this module, I gained an greater desire to implement even more Smart Board activities than I usually do, because of the things found in the Notebook files.

Module 6- Week 1

I enjoy creative projects, because of this I have become interested in graphic design and computer art.  I have created many invitations and brochures for my school.  I feel very comfortable using many design programs.  Since I feel comfortable in my graphic skills, I wanted to build my skills and confidence in using Notebook for Smart Board.  I often find useful slides on Smart Board Exchange, however sometimes the objectives of those slides do not match mine.  I want to be able to make my own activities to enrich lessons with the use of my Smart Board.  I found editing and making changes were very user friendly.  I also was happy to see all the options that were available to the user.  I began to explore the files in Notebook.  I liked how many tools are made for educators to use.  Many of the resources in Notebook looked very interactive.  I can see my students enjoying these tools and gaining a better understanding of the material because of the visuals provided.  I am looking forward to exploring more of the Notebook files next week.  

Here is an example of an invitation I made for a school event.

Module 5- Week 2

While I was working on editing and making changes to articles in databases, I began to find ways to export and send the database articles I found.  For many of the articles discovered, I thought it was much more simple to send the article than I had thought.  I did come across the same challenges as I did last week when it came to finding the whole text to an article.  In addition, I did find that some articles had restrictions when it came to certain exporting tasks.  Similar to finding the whole text of some articles, when I wanted to export and/or edit some texts a subscription to the database or purchasing the text in its entirety was required.  This became a challenge, even though I understand the need for the restrictions on the articles, I think in the future I might consider exploring other databases to see if there is a way to avoid running into this challenge.

Module 5- Week 1

This week I practiced using databases.  I mainly used Google Scholar, ERIC, and I looked through the ISTE journals.  I uses those because when completing my search for my literature review all three offered many resources on my topic.  One thing that I found frustrating was the links given to articles from the database searches did not always provide the whole article or make it easily available.  At times I was able to read a section of the text or an excerpt, but to find the whole text I was asked to join the database by purchasing a subscription.  The other option was leaving that site in search for finding the whole article.  This made the search for an article time consuming.  When I did find an article in its entirety, I found it was less difficult than I expected to make changes to the document and add comments.  I thought the formats made it user friendly and helpful for a user who might not be familiar with the task.

Module 4- Week 2

This week I was continuing to work on PowerPoint.  I was practicing adding master slides to the presentation.  I have tried doing this before and really had a hard time with it.  In the past when I was adding the master slide, the other slides were changing.  This was frustrating, because I would have to start everything over.  This time however, it was very simple to add master slide.  I practiced going back and forth between master slides and other slides.  I even practiced adding hyperlinks between all of the slides.  In the end, I think this really improved my PowerPoint.  The PowerPoint I edited has over 100 slides.  The new changes make it very easy to navigate and move smoothly from slide to slide.  Now I am thinking of many other ways to include PowerPoint in my lessons.

Module 4- Week 1

This week I wanted to focus on PowerPoint.  I use this regularly in my classroom.  My students really enjoy how PowerPoint looks.  They get excited when it is very animated.  Because they enjoy it so much, I would like to incorporate it in more lessons.  To make it easier on lesson plans and myself, adding hyperlinks would be beneficial since I often use websites to enrich lessons.  Adding hyperlinks is what I focused on as I practiced this week.  I like how I could type in something different than the website title to hyperlink.  I think this made it look more professional and organized.  I also liked how there were options to how to adding a hyperlink.  I looked at adding transitions and animations after I worked on adding hyperlinks.

This is my practice with adding hyperlinks. 

This is my product after adding them and playing the slide show.