Major Project- Final Post

I can not believe that these six weeks have gone by so fast! I absolutely loved my topic for my Major Project! I learned so many new ways to introduce technology in a classroom environment. Before I took the Principles of Instructional Technologies course, I was very hesitate of having technology embedded into my future classroom. I kept telling myself that technology is so prevalent in our society that it will never go away. Especially now more than ever since we have children in schools that have never lived without these new advancements in technology. But through this Major Project I have learned and became confident with establishing technology curriculum in my future classroom.

As I continue to reflect on my major project, I noticed that I adjusted my topic lessons slightly from my original mind map. I changed my Social Studies and Science lessons from community helpers and animals habitats to hibernation and the First Thanksgiving lessons. As I was working throughout my Major Project I felt like it would be beneficial to adjust those two lessons for where I wanted to go with my 'students' and to keep up with the whole Fall Unit ideology. I used various resources to help make my project very tech savvy. Each week, I uploaded different thinglinks with all of the unique cool tool resources that I used to explain step by step each lesson plan. After creating my weekly thinglinks, I ended up creating blog posts of each lesson plan throughout this entire Fall Unit. I also only used photos from Flickr or from my own camera just to avoid going against any copyright or creative common laws. Here is the link of my overall thinglink account, if you want to check it out!!

Throughout my Major Project, I had the experience working with various types of cool tools such as Canvas, Speakpipe, mystory, Sock Puppets, Powtoon, and Time Teacher Lite. Most of these tools where very easy to use but some such as PowToon, Sock Puppets and ABCYA.com made it a little bit more challenging to incorporate into my lessons. For example, I created my First Thanksgiving movie using PowToon and I had to create it under google chrome instead of Safari since I could not add or change any of the pictures. Also whenever I copied the link from my published PowToon video into thinglink it only displayed the picture of the video not the correct link to the actual video. I even went to the solution center and they couldn't even figure it out. This was just one of those instances that I decided not to worry about it since this was out of my control. I ended up having the link embedded into my weekly blog post so people could have access to it. On the other hand, Sock Puppets, the iPad app, was applicable with my thinglink account except that the free app only could let you record a video for only 30 seconds. If I was using this app in my classroom I would just pay for the tool to have longer recording time. Lastly, I used two different games from ABCYA.com that I thought where appropriate for each lesson however they would only work in google chrome not safari. 

Throughout this whole process, I have learned how to be patient with technology and also be creative with it. I learned how to create and set up lesson plans that revolve around the usage of technology. This project truly opened up my eyes to how technology can benefit you and your students in a classroom. The world is quickly changing from all of these rapid technology advancements and one must keep up with the trend to not fall behind. Keeping up with the changing trends will have me connect with my students year after year. I want to be the kind of teacher that is always learning about new tools and resources to incorporate into my technology savvy class! I am glad to have gone through this beneficial and educational journey!  I want to thank you for reading this last blog post and following me throughout my Major Project!