Looking at my concept map you can see what I took away from this class for the most part.

I have to admit that I was looking forward to the technology class. Not only from the standpoint of someone who loves all things related to computers, but to see how it was being incorporated in the classroom. To that end it was both expected and unexpected. A lot of the information seemed to rehashing old material for me, but I know it wasn’t for some of my classmates. Seeing how this technology could be used in the classroom was useful because when it came to utilizing it effectively my creative well was pretty empty. I do think that one question that seemed to run constantly through my mind was how we going to use this material if we were at a school without the necessary resources. It is all nice and good to learn about this, but if we don’t have the necessary equipment it is going to be a little tough. I know we addressed this question in our “Bridging the Digital Divide” strategy, but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee success unfortunately. Regardless of that, I did encounter a lot of new applications that seemed incredibly useful both inside and outside the classroom.

I could go on and on about the applications, but I’m just going to mention a few of my favorites. The bibliography applications had me shaking my head and wondering where they were when I was editing manuscripts. If you’ve ever used Reference Manager you’ll know what I’m talking about. Evernote spoke to my organizational side. I’m definitely one of those people that constantly emails myself stuff so I’ll remember later. Glogster let me exercise my out of shape creative muscles. The fact that a lot of these programs had an educational component was great. To give teachers tools of such functionality is probably a boon for many.