Reflection

I can't believe this course is done already. I have to first say that out of the many courses I have taken through Walden University I enjoyed this one the most. I learned so many new things that I can use in my classroom. The text was extremely helpful and the handouts that were in the each chapter are terrific to use in the classroom. The most striking revelation I had was how to teach students how to use the internet effectively. I learned several ways to help the students learn how to choose effective websites and how to tell if they are reliable. The way the course was structured helped me each week in thinking about how to go about teaching my students these new literacies. I now have an array of artifacts to use with my students as I begin to plan more interesting projects. Since I teach self-contained students I have to change things up frequently to keep them engaged. I also have to teach all of the major subjects so using the same ideas for projects can get boring and redundant. This course has helped me create new and exciting project ideas for my students. One professional goal I would like to reach is to work with my department and teach those teachers what I have been taught about the new literacies. I am the head of the special education department so I would do this by setting up several meeting times and create different presentations for my teachers. I would also have the handouts printed out so that they could use them and hopefully would have a student project to show them. Several of my teachers struggle with keeping the students engaged and I believe it is because they do not truly understand all that is out there for them to use with the students. For the first time in a while I am excited about assigning a unit project to my students and have them enjoy working on it.