Reflection

The best way I can describe my experience in this class is “mild.” I was really excited to start this class and learn more about how to use multi-modals in the classroom. I really enjoyed coming to the class, and the experiences we had in class. I loved the Cleveland Film Festival, but I think that was because I really liked my film rather than the experience as a whole. I hated Little Brother and the graphic novels. Although they would be good to use as a reading choice or to keep in the classroom, but personally I would not enjoy teaching them at all. I LOVED OUR FILM TEXT. It was a simple and enjoyable read. While reading, I constantly kept finding videos that related to the text. (Clearly, as seen with the quotes and videos on my blog.) I really enjoyed the LOST class lesson, and how we could apply multiple films, or television shows in the classroom and discuss them with the technology, or critique them in a technological perspective. I thought that many of the articles we read for blog posts were very repetitive. Although how Facebook was created, there is only so much about Facebook and how the technology surge is changing lesson plans without reading similar information. Although I thought the amount of blogging we needed to do was extremely tedious, I did enjoy reading everyone’s “Pleasure Reading” or extra posts. Most interestingly, I liked watching the spoken word poetry from Sarah and Mat’s musical history. Also when discussing LOST, I love that many of us posted blogs about that as well. When it comes to incorporating technology into the class, I kept thinking to myself  “We learned a lot of this in Educational Technology,” but like any other great class and teacher multi-modals offer us now a choice. We learned the different sites, and capabilities a classroom can have in order to a student to learn. As of now, I would like to use a wiki in order to post assignments, and notes for those who are absent in class. I really enjoyed the wiki project and out of all of our multi-modal adventures this semester, this is the main one I would like to continue to use.  I feel the main problem of using a lot of technology in the classroom, is the fact that use of multi-modals is fully dependent on the area. If students are from a poorer area, laptops, films etc are not as available as other schools. As educators, we need to make sure that although teachers can use multi-modals as a way to connect to students, but we must make sure that they are learning.