From+my+heart

Wow! What an interesting and enlightening semester this has been. It has made my passion for teaching so much deeper and I am so excited to use the tools that I have been given this semester in my classroom. I have to admit, however, that at the beginning of the semester I thought that this was going to be an easy class with minimal time constraints. Boy, was I wrong! It has been a lot of hard work creating this wiki but I am so thankful for all of things that I have discovered. While some projects took awhile, I felt that these projects were actually the most beneficial. For example, the digital story took a lot of planning and a lot of time but I was so happy with the product and have come up with many ideas on how to use this in a classroom. I think the most important thing that I have taken away for the classes is the thousands of free resources (Web 2.0 tools) that are on the world wide web. I can not wait to explore even more to implement in my future classroom. Through this class, and others, I have learned that teaching (and learning) doesn't need to be boring and informal. Students are now able to use the tools that I have been introduced in this class to make their learning experiences personal to them. Students are bombarded with visual, digital, and technological toys at home; it is time to take their love for these things and turn them into a learning tools. We as future teachers of this country are responsible for engaging and empowering our students to learn; the tools from this class give us the opportunity to do this in a fun way. What I enjoyed most about the tools that we were introduced to is that they still require planning on our parts and critical thinking on the students end. 21st century learning doesn't need to be a distraction to everyday learning it can be used as part of our units and a way for students to connect the information to their own lives; and this is how we will create life long learners! I will definitely be keeping so many of the tools given to us in the classroom for future use in my classroom and I am so excited to see how kids use and learn from them. I am also so curious what someone will come up with next! One last thing that I have to mention; the wiki. The wiki, what an amazing cool tool to connect my students in and out of the classroom. While everything on the wiki that I have created is so cool and fascinating, it wouldn't be possible with out the framework of the actual wiki. I will most definitely be using a wiki in my classroom. I love how interactive and accessible it is. My favorite thing about it is that students can check it at home and find useful information that they may have missed in class. Students need a constant reminder of what's important for their classes and I think the wiki is the best tool for this use. The wiki is a great way for me to teach around the clock, even if its just restating what we discussed in class. In conclusion, I just want to say thank you for all of the great tools you, my professor, have introduced to me this semester. This information is priceless and stuff that I never would have known about if I weren't able to take this class. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to make learning within my classroom a more engaging and exciting experience for my students, I appreciate it more than you will ever know.

Jen Malinowski