Reaction to the Peer Review Process

I loved the peer review process. I found it very helpful to have classmates encouragement and critiques of my assignments. They helped me to realize that many of my assignments were not being viewed by others the way I saw them due to a mac vs. pc issue relating to fonts. I was then able to create my projects that included the design features as pdf files. I also learned a lot from reading my peers assignments carefully and measuring them against the rubrics. It gave me an opportunity to learn about the other options for assignments even if I didn't choose to do that one myself. I felt I was able to give constructive feedback. It was easy because the people I peer reviewed always did a nice job and I usually only had minor editing and technical critiques. I felt on both sides all criticism was very constructive and always felt a sense that we were rooting for each other to do well. I definitely appreciate peer review being a required portion of the course, it gave us all the opportunity to be truly helpful to one another with out worrying about offending each other.

Reflection for Grant Discussions

From the discussion on grants I learned that many colleagues have the same fears about them that I do and after reading the articles many are easily remedied. I also learned that grants are a great solution for teachers who are working in a district that is struggling financially. It is a great way to bring first class materials to an impoverished area. My critique of this discussion was that many people did not propose a question or answer other peoples questions causing many lines of dialogue to come to a halt long before their potential was reached.

Reflection for Prensky Discussion

The discussion regarding Marc Prensky was interesting. I learned where many other colleagues are at regarding technology and media and it's use in education. I imagine some people changed their views and became more comfortable as this course went on. I learned that along with my fear of students beginning to lack in relational skills due to the isolation of technology that they could also build relational skills as technology can also connect people and often be used collaboratively. My critique of this discussion was that there were too many choices for discussion strings. This class being so fast paced it left little time for extra poking around and I would have found it interesting to hear more peoples opinions on one or two lines of questioning.

Reflection for Discussion 2

The discussion on the pro's and con's of presentation software made me laugh. It seemed many of us had experiences with PowerPoint presentations that broke many or all of the rules. It was a fresh topic for us all because we had all just completed a PowerPoint presentation with our groups for Dr. Fitzgerald's course. Through the discussion I realized that PowerPoint can be a great tool but is often abused and misused. It should have purposes such as highlighting main points, providing simple visuals and keeping a presentation on course. It should not include every word of a presentation, have graphics that are complicated,nor should it have to many crazy transitions in it! My critique of this discussion is that people seemed to struggle with asking questions, which then led to little back and forth dialogue.

Reflection for Discussion 1

I learned several things from the discussion held on 21st century skills. The first is to stop and think about the many 21st skills that many teachers are already teaching without even realizing it. For example when we teach about ways to help save the Earth we are teaching the students to be global citizens. I also learned that many of the 21st century skill can easily be adopted into current curriculum. The skills just need to be brought to the attention of teachers. The discussion did lead me to realize that a lot of work could be done to emphasize the development of many of these skills. My frustration in the discussion was that there were too many stands of discussion going on. At times I wished that everyone could be involved on just 2 or three discussions because it is difficult to catch all of them and I felt some discussions could have been further developed if more people had viewed them.