Assignment 11D

The linked courses have been very beneficial to me for several reasons. Most importantly, for me as a learner, having to look closely at one topic (in my case - series books) and pare it down to the bare essentials forced me to become very familiar with the topic and share what I felt what was most important for my audience, or potential audience, to know. There is a lot of information out there, but to create a digital story that is 25 or 30 minutes long would be just too much! The linked course allowed me the opportunity to play with a topic and learn some new technology tools at the same time that I can share with other teachers and with students with whom I work.

The assignments that we've completed every week have helped me manage the overwhelming amount of technology learning that has gone on. Some of the tools I was already familiar with, but some were new. Practicing the audio mixing on Goldwave was fun and new. I have created a photostory before, but I did not add narration before, so that was a good learning experience for me. I've also enjoyed the blogging opportunity, but I do wish that there had been some requirement or expectation built in for us to comment either on each other's course blog postings or on each other's personal blog postings. The blog assignments, because of the lack of interaction between all of us as students and from Dr. Robin seemed a little superficial at times.

The digital photostory assignments did not necessarily help me learn the children's literature content better, but it did give me a way to look at one specific children's literature topic more closely.

I would be interested in taking other linked courses pairing content with technology, but since I am nearing the end of my degree plan, I probably won't be taking them. Maybe as post-graduate work, but I would and will definitely recommend them to others!

I do think that offering the content component as a 3-hour class and then doing the technology component as an online offering would be a great idea. That way more time can be devoted to content. Plus, having the technology component online would almost force the use of more online communication which is how our students communicate all the time. It would push us as educators to use the online tools for communication that we tend to shy away from.