Wig is LOST, He Has to Go Back!

Ok, so what happened is that I completely missed the week 5 blog posting. I let myself get distracted with work and Easter and I flat out failed to see that I was supposed to post another entry on my GAME plan.

So, despite the fact that this post is late and now out of sequence, I'm going to post one anyway. What I should have done originally for this post was to update the activities I was doing to achieve my game plan and discuss whether or not I felt my planned activities were effective. As far as things I was trying to do, I had set a goal for improving my comfort and facility with APA format. I spent week 5 looking for decent APA format books on Amazon and Barnes and Noble as well as some local book retailers here. I did find a good resource book and ordered it. Having researched a bit to find a good book for my needs that was a practical guide I was happy with my order. I had also found some social networking applications, Elgg and Mahara which I began playing with and asking questions about. By the end of week 5 I wasn't terribly well versed with them, but I had made something of a start. While I'm not convinced that either of those tools would make particularly good classroom applications, I was excited with the technology and the influx of ideas. I am starting to think that customized educational portals may be really useful tools for teachers. As an English teacher for example, if I can put together a first-stop resource site for my students that provides them with safe chat areas, moderated message boards, content-appropriate wiki's and user added content that helps them learn and enhance their understanding of core area concepts I may be on the right track for really incentivizing students to start taking more and more responsibility for their own learning.

At any rate, while my current dabbles in social networking tools have given me some real interest in that area, I realize I need to learn a good deal more about creating and managing social and academic portals that can be truly useful to my students. So, like anything else, for every few steps forward, you realize that the journey seems to keep farther and farther.