I was so excited to start this semester. To start grad school. I had wasted a year of my life working at a credit union. I was bored, and worse, I was disappointed in myself for not giving back to society. I was not following my dream of helping others.
Looking back on my expectations for what I could l learn this semester, I am very happy with I have learned so far. I do think that I've only hit the tip of the iceberg so far, though. I know I can learn more to better myself in my future career. And not only that, but this class has helped me gain the confidence that once I have finished grad school, I will be able to keep learning and growing with the aid of technology. As we have discussed the shift from educating students to be information-memorizers (outdated) to educating students to be information-gatherers, I have thought a lot about what it means to gather information myself. If I am going to teach students to be information-gatherers, shouldn't I learn to gather information myself so that I can continually better myself as an educator, long after school ends?
I have really liked how we kept a blog for this class. In so many classes I have taken before, I would throw out the notes I took soon after the class ended. It was too overwhelming to me to organize the information, though there were times when I felt it would be helpful to have those notes. This blog has been a really great way to keep track of what I've learned, and it will be great to refer back to it. On the first day of class I hoped that this class would be one I would think about from years and years down the road and continue to use information from. While new tricks and tools and programs are coming out all the time, the principle is the same - to use technology as a tool to educate others and educate myself.
Although I had used twitter prior to this class, my eyes were completely opened by the way we used twitter in this class. It is still kind of overwhelming to me, but I think that is something I need to get used to. By following certain hashtags, I think I will be able to keep growing and learning, in order to be a better educator. I felt this way at the beginning of the semester, I still feel this way, and I hope I will always feel this way: I want to always care what I am learning about, always care about what I am doing day to day to better my career, and always seek to better myself as both a student and an educator.
I'm very glad I took this class. It has been very inspiring to me. I have loved all the things that we learned about, but I also can't wait to learn more! I think that's a good thing. I have been inspired to learn more and more.