Response to Melanie’s and Carrie’s Reflection

I’m not sure if it is because many of us are going through the same things right now as seniors, or because we grew up in the same time era, but it appears we all have a lot in common. We all seem to have gone through the same process as we developed our New Literacies Project. From the start the three of us discovered quickly that we did not have much technology background, and we would need to explore before attempting to do this project. Once the exploration had taken place we all embarked on different technologies, yet they all resulted in similar projects.

Each project allowed us to show the new information that we have learned in a creative, almost artistic way. What I think we all appreciated about this project was that it helped with two vital teaching aspects: literacy and technology. We had little information on both features and through this project we were forced to learn them. And as hesitant as we all were (and we all were) I think we all benefited from the project. From reading both of your blogs I see that once again we were in the same boat, when I say that literacy was the same to us. Literacy was reading and writing and although that seems like a vague definition I never gave it much more than that. Through this I learned that there are different literacies and different aspects to each of these. I was amazed.

On an ending note it seems that we all look at this project in a positive light and we all see how this will one day benefit our classroom. Yes, I did a digital story, but looking at Melanie’s and Carrie’s entries I was like, dang these are really cool. I secretly got excited when I read Carrie’s website because I kept thinking of all these ideas that I would want on my website to have. I can’t think of a better way to keep my student’s family in the loop and up to date on what is going on with my classroom. After reading Melanie’s blog I also kept thinking of the benefits of keeping a blog. I could keep a blog between students, faculty, or even parents. There are just so many things that could stem from setting up a blog in the beginning of the year.

As frustrating as it all seemed in the beginning, it definitely was well worth it.