The end of the course

Well Intro to Authoring Tools has come to an end. I have to say this class was like "a breath of fresh air". I have learned a great deal from the course without being overly stressed out. The reading were nice "easy reads" and if there was something that I did not understand the book followed by explicet information with plenty of examples. Each task I enjoyed doing. I was not concerned before I started each task because I new the atmosphere of the course was not overwhelming. As far as the projects. I learned a great deal from doing them and again was not concerned with foreign terms and random requests by the professor. Dr. Mullane allowed me to correctly grasp the concept of and explore a variety of authoring tools. I feel I can leave the course with the capability of successfully identifying and reflecting upon tools that are available to help me in the field of education. I only hope I can talk this highly of my future courses at NJCU. Thanks Dr. Mullane.

Tara

Group Project

I had a terrific group for my project. Thanks Ken, Dina and Stephanie. I think everything worked out extremely well. Thanks to Dina we got it started and organized and of course finished. Ken took care of alot of the technical support and Stephanie had some great information for out project. The only problem that I had is my other three group partners all worked with upper grades 7-8 grade where as I am a 1st grade teacher. In the beginning of the process Steph and the others mentioned that we could somehow tie in the lower grades to the upper grades and I had said "don't worry about that I will work with you guys on the upper grades". I figured how hard could it be to adjust my 1st grade plans to 7th or 8th grade plans. Wow was I wrong. Let me just say that if I ever had to teach in the upper grades I would have to go back to school. It is a whole different ball game up there : ) but thanks to Steph (who I worked on the lesson plans with) she was very patient and had great tips for me to complete my end of the work. It was an enlightening experiece that I enjoyed being a part of. Unfortunately since our project was geared towards the upper grades I cannot use it but learning photostory itself will be something I will defenitly use with my class. I am thinking "Holidays' around the world". The kids will love it and without this project I would have never been able to do it!
Tara