Week 6

Well, we are all done with 515 and I feel pretty good about it. This class is called technology tools and I feel like that is exactly what we covered. We started with the graphics and presentation programs which for me was a bit of a slow start. I had no use for the graphics program, but I did find it fun to play with and thought it could be used on a free day or as a introductory activity. The presentation programs like Empressor however, I did find useful. I thought the slide design was useful and easy and I played with adding music and links which I thought was easier than using power point. Next we got into search engines and the Boolean techniques. I had never compared search engines before and I just used whatever came on my computer. I soon began to like foxfire a lot more than before and through the use of our Ning and the evaluations, I found some issues with Internet explorer. It was also nice to be reminded of Boolean techniques, because that is something that I had been taught years ago and forgot about. Week three got us further into google docs with spreadsheets and again I was pleasantly surprised. I have used Excel quite a bit and had also used some simple formulas. I was impressed with google docs again by the ease of use, access, and collaboration. Being able to share and access information from any computer hooked up to the web is a lot better than having years worth of spreadsheets backed up on one computer. The recipe formula also made me think about different and creative ways to use a spreadsheet that maybe I haven't done before. The most valuable and useful information for me was probably the software evaluation. I found that the software evaluation tool we used (Sun Prairie) was pretty much everything I would consider on my own and somethings that I never thought of. This was very useful to me because I have just begun to process of purchasing some new automotive software and I was able to evaluate it and share it with others to get a second opinion or two. This class was pertinent to what I am trying to do in my classroom, it opened me up to some new technologies and ideas, and even made me a little more open minded and creative with things I already use. I am looking forward to see how the next class will help me improve my teaching.