Wrap-Up

I found the majority of the assignments we had this semester to be helpful in determining how I might do things in my own classroom some day. The digital learning assignment was definitely a new approach to an assignment that could be very generic and unoriginal. I had fun doing this assignment, had it been in the form of a paper, I think that it would have been dry and not very personal. I think everyone had a creative way of approaching this assignment. While we probably should have spent less time on it so we could have got on with the rest of the semester, I did feel like it connected with James Gee's book. I felt like the Gee book was dry and hard to get through, especially for those of us who are not into video games. However, I give credit to Gee for coming up with an original concept to present the ways that children learn.
The memorandum assignment was very helpful as it demonstrated the type of paper work we'll have to deal with as teachers. Of course it was tedious, but I was delighted to be working on an assignment that actually applied to the work I will be doing some day.This also the case for the writing assignment sequence project. The sequence project was interesting because it was the first time in my college career that I was actually exposed to lesson-plan making. I wish I had more of that training, but this project was definitely helpful in establishing that for me. Harvey's book, Nonfiction Matters, also was a helpful source in finding appropriate projects for the students. I was happy that she included real-life examples to help us understand her assignments. I always felt that non-fiction was much harder to teach, but I've taken enough from this assignment that my opinion has changed slightly.
The wiki project and the articles were also helpful in figuring out the best ways to approach teaching children. It was also interesting hearing other people's responses to the articles to hear different takes on the same material. The blog entries were also helpful tools for reflection and collaboration.
Overall, I feel like this class provided the most real-life examples of the profession that we all are planning on entering into out of all of the other college courses I have taken thus far and I am grateful for that experience.