EDUC 6712 Reflection

The most striking revelation I had about teaching new literacy skills to my students is that there are actually a lot of resources on the web and in books to help teachers with these skills. I think there are teachers who feel that nobody wants to help them teach the new literacy skills so they don't even try to give this experience to their students. Our class resource book, Reading the Web, gave tons of ideas to help teachers give their students great literacy skills lessons. I especially liked the handouts at the back of each chapter because it makes my life even easier since the handouts are already made for me. The knowledge that I have gained from this course will really help me teach the new literacy skills to my students. I have learned how to help my students safely and efficiently search the Internet for information. I have found useful techniques in our resource book that allows the students to develop integral skills for the rest of their educational career. I plan on teaching my inquiry based unit to my students after Christmas. I really feel that the knowledge I have gained on how to teach internet inquiry will help my students gain knowledge on using the strategies to help them with their internet inquiry. One professional development goal that I have is I would like to use more 21st century skills, like wikis, blogs, and podcasts, with my students. I have already started using the blogs in my classroom. I made sure that I used a website that was specifically for my students and no other person on the Internet could access their writings. I feel that the mistakes made with not having the students and parents sign a separate permission form to use the blog and by letting the students chat about non-subject material have helped me understand the things that can go wrong with 21st century inquiry projects. I have fixed these mistakes and now the blog is running more smoothly. Next, I would like to attend a conference on how to incorporate wikis and podcasts into the classroom. It's hard for a teacher who has limited access to technology to incorporate these tools into their lessons, but I am determined to try and succeed. I am planning to incorporate my inquiry based famous Missourian wiki into the classroom. If that succeeds, I would like to use more wikis and have the students have partners with other children in a different classroom as them. This would allow for the true use of the wiki, which is group projects with people who are not located in your vicinity. Podcasts are a bit harder for me to implement because my school does not carry headphones with attached microphones. In order to fix this problem, I would like to requisition for a class set of headphone/microphone combinations for next year. I feel that this start can really expand the possibilities of 21st century skills that can be taught in my classroom next year.