Last Weekly Journal
Hello, friends! I cannot believe my summer classes are officially over. I found that my last class in EDU 492 was probably the most fun (besides camp!) because we got to see each content area teach and really show what they are passionate about. It was great to see all the different tech tools that each group incorporated into their lesson plans, and to see how they worked (or didn’t!).
To me, I was extremely happy with the results on our tool and to see everyone actually “enjoy” science. Some comments like “wow, science is actually fun!” made me laugh because there is so much more to science than collecting data and putting it into excel. I found that simulations are a great way to help students see scientific methods visually, and would be extremely helpful for science classes such as chemistry- where things are very abstract and are hard to conceptualize.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this class and being able to work with not only my cohort, but other cohorts as well. I enjoyed having both Nikki and April as my teachers, because you got a little taste of something each time! However, what I found challenging out of this class was the amount of work the science cohort put into camp and that it was a little stressful at times. I wonder if maybe next year, assigning all cohorts to have the same amount of work within the two weeks we are in content area would make it more organized and less stressful.
Thank you, Nikki for an awesome class and for being a great teacher. I hope to take another class with you, because you are not only enjoyable, but because you made the class fun and I found these tools to be very helpful! We as future educators need to think about technology in our classrooms and that other tools other than a smartboard can be very useful.