525 Reflection

The greatest benefit that I am gaining out of this graduate experience is confidence. Not that I was intimidated by computers--I wasn't. It's just that I never had time to practice. I am not only gaining confidence in the stuff that we learn in our classes (webquests, internet as a learning resourse, wikis, etc.), but also "old-school" stuff like word, powerpoint, and spreadsheets. I value this experience very much and am thankful for it. I feel that it is making my teaching better. Just this week, to start the second semester in my engineering class, all I had was rather dry powerpoint on fluid systems. So what did I do? I broke my class up into seven groups and had them create their own presentation on hydraulics and pneumatics based on their internet research. Never before would I have thought that asking seven groups to make a powerpoint on the same subject would be successful. It was a huge success. For later in the year, I plan to use a webquest about bridges, and next year, I would like the students to start some kind of online portfolio. So, even though we are early in the program, I really feel like my teaching is undergoing a transformation and becoming more interesting.

Student Wiki's and Internet Safety

We have a very nice engineering program at St. Thomas More HS. One of the problems that we have encountered is how to save or carry on the nice work and projects from one year to the next. Sure, there are portfolios, but let's be honest those can be kind of boring and don't really represent work done on a computer very well. One idea that I had is to have the first year students in the engineering program set up a Wiki page so that they could display their work for anyone to see. I was really excited about it until I thought about the "anyone can see" part of it. Is there danger in student Wiki pages? The last thing that I would want to do is have my students set up something that would reveal too much personal information about themselves. Any thought?

Educational Sites

We have a nice engineering program at Thomas More. I really enjoy teaching in it. The problem? I'm not an engineer. (Don't tell my students.) The program (Project Lead the Way) doesn't give you quite enought to work with. I rely heavily on sources other than what they have given me. For me, it used to be books and stuff, but now I look for things online. That is where I am finding educational sites to be so useful. Right now we're working on Thermodynamics. In the past, I would have Googled it and gotten a lot of information for scientists and engineers that would sail right over my head. Now I can use engines like those found on the Knowledge Network, and my search becomes much easier. I am teaching Thermodynamics right now, and I using the sites that I found to relay information, but also to have the students do some exploring of their own. It made things a lot easier this year.