I think that the education system in America, and particularly in the area that I grew up in, is really strong! People gripe about it all the time and I’m sure they always will but I think they need to get out of their little bubbles and look at the big picture. There are children and adults all over the world that don’t receive an education at all. That’s really sad, but it’s the truth. There are kids in third world countries who have never even heard of a computer, and we have kids here who are lucky enough to get their own computer to use all day every day. I think Americans are really spoiled and we often take advantage of the great things we’ve been blessed with, especially technology. I do think though, that if we have these great programs and technologies, we should definitely use them because so many people in the world can’t. It’s kind of like when you leave food on your plate and someone tells you to finish it because there’s starving children in the world. Well, if you have technology available to you, you should use it because there are a lot of people out there who don’t have access to it like we do.

1. One thing I learned about in this class that was completely new to me was the concept of on-line digital scrapbooking. I love scrapbooking and ever since I got a digital camera, I always wondered if there were some easier way to do scrapbooking and now I’ve found it. I really liked the Scrapblog site and in fact, I even did my tutorial over how to use it! I’m hoping to have some free time this summer to work on my scrapbooks and I think I’m going to do them all online using this program. I can’t wait!
2. One of the podcasts I listened to was a man talking about how he went around to different schools and did tutorials on how to use the internet when it first came out. This made me remember my first time using the internet and really got me thinking about how much I depend on the internet. I don’t know what I would do without the internet; I feel so lucky to live in a day and age where we have such great technology!
3. I am glad that we used the del.icio.us social bookmarking website in this class. I’m always finding websites that I like and adding them to my “favorites” list. The nice thing about del.icio.us is that I can have access to that favorites list any time from anywhere. I also like that the del.icio.us site allows you to organize the sites into categories and assign “tags” or “keywords” to the sites. I know my del.icio.us site is one that I will continue adding to forever.
4. Looking at the different things that some of the Teachers from the Trenches posted throughout the semester was one of my favorite parts of this class. It’s really neat that we were able to interact with different people from all different places. They all had great things to say and it really made me realize what a great profession teaching is. I love that teaching is not competitive and that teachers always offer so much support to one another!
5. When I was developing my online newsletter, it hit me how easy it will be to use technology to communicate with parents and other teachers. In a perfect world, I would like to be able to talk to everyone face to face all the time, but I know that many people (especially working parents) just don’t have time and aren’t always able to coordinate their schedules so that they can visit with their children’s teachers on a regular basis. Doing things like online newsletters will be so great because parents will be able to keep up on what’s going on in the classroom and you don’t have to worry about the students losing any papers because it would be online instead.