Information Technology Class comes to a close

It is hard to believe that 15 weeks of class are done. Its even harder to believe that we have already completed more than 15 weeks of the school year. THere will only be about 3 weeks until the end of the semester when we get back from Christmas break. This year is just flying by.
As I begin my final reflections on our class, I believe it is also important to thing about where each of us started and where we hoped to travel during the course. I am the team geek already. Computers and technology are a part of most of the things I am involved with each day. But there are always new challenges and new student needs out there to be met. I took this class not so much to improve my skills as a way of seeing what else was out there and how others were applying it. I wanted some new tricks to put into my toolbag.
With that goal in mind, the class was both a success and a little bit of a let down. The material for class was great and I did pick up some new tools and web-based applications that I can use to support my school and my students. But my second hope was that the class would give me the opportunity to interact with other techies and classroom teachers to see what they were doing and how they were meeting student needs. This course has been offered as a summer option at my school, but I passed on it because I was hoping to interact with teachers from other schools. My classmates were great and it was fun talking to them, but most were not in the classroom yet or were not strong in technology. I did learn from my peers, but did not pick up as many peer insights as I had hoped. So in some ways, my hunt for peer insights continues.There is a lot of good technology out there, we just have to find it and discover effective ways to use it to meet our students needs.