Thing 23 – The End and 7 1/2 Habits Revisited

First of all, I want to thank my coach, Shelly Paul, for organizing and presenting this course and thus, all these wonderful tools and ideas for me to use. This is something I am going to use and hopefully expand on as time allows. I also look forward to an update/refresher class in the future.

As I reflect on what I have learned during these last 10 weeks, I tend to go back to the 1st assignment to talk about the 3 most important habits (for me) of “7 1/2 Habits of Life Long Learners” . At that time, I felt those habits most important to me were ;

No.2 : “Accept responsibility for your own Learning” – As I went deeper into the course, I found that I had to overcome my own initial frustrations at not being able to remember a particular format for getting an assignment completed. My first inclination (concerning computers) has always been to “call somebody” but through this course, I have been given the tools to solve just about any question and even experiment on my own. Even if I do have to “call someone” occasionally, I will know more about what to ask.

No. 4 : “Have Confidence as an effective learner” – I had designated this as my most challenging habit and I was correct. My confidence in “Learning how to Effectively Blog” did seem to present a challenge to me every time I opened up my edublog and started to write ” Thing…”. I have always been a firm believer in You don’t really feel confident that you have learned something until you begin to share it with another. “Blogging” is not always about trying to teach something, it is also about sharing plans,ideas,beliefs…etc. My Blogging assignments have given me that confidence and I intend to use it every chance I get.

No.7 : PLAY – This part was not difficult for me. I will have to say that I had sooooo much fun playing with all the new tools that I sometimes forgot that I had somewhat of a deadline to meet. I even think I stumbled on a simple way to lose some weight. There were a couple of times that I was so immersed in what I was doing that I forgot to eat lunch or even a snack and recently, when I weighed myself, I had lost 7 pounds.

I think that if I keep expanding and exploring from this point, I will really have gained some insight into the inevitable trend in education and how it is conducted in the future. We will all grasp the obviously good ideas and tools with gusto and crawl cautiously through the “Tripe” and we will, at the same time, train our students and our own children and grandchildren…etc. to do the same.

Thing 14 – Web Tools

I had sooooo much fun exploring the various tools that I ended up looking at ALL OF THEM. I intend to check many of them out in more detail when I have more time.

The JigZone puzzles really took my time and interest. I think it would be an excellent addition to a class wiki , especially when the picture is relating to what is being studied at the time.

I would love to be able to use LetterPop to develop a quarterly class newsletter about various activities during the year. Last year, at Halloween, we had a costume day where the students came up with some very creative ideas to dress up their instruments. This would be a good forum for them to present this to their parents.

30 Boxes would be good to add to a website or blog so students and parents would know what is happening and any future events.

Quizlet looks like something I could use to develop a way for students to quiz themselves on musical terms, history…etc.