One more week into this course and I am still continuing to learn so many new things. When I first read our assignment for this week I was pretty confused on what "affordance" even meant, but after reading the course materials and looking at the postings of my other group members I was able to have a much better understanding of the word. Although each person in my group had a slightly different definition/meaning of the word affordance I decided that to me the word meant a practical and intended use of the item, or in this case the technology. I felt that this affordance analysis allowed us to look at when and where we are using these particular technologies and if we are using them appropriately. It also gave us a chance to get some ideas from our peers on how to use each technology.

For my affordance analysis I chose to do MS Word vs. Paper and Pencil (context of uses-writing class). I started by doing the list of affordances for MS Word. It seemed much easier for me to come up with this list. I also went to MS Word on my computer and searched around to see if there was anything that I had left off. When it came to the list of affordances for Paper and Pencil I had a much harder time thinking of a lot of things to put on this list. This was a time when I was really glad that my group was going to be giving me suggestions. I was really hoping that they would be able to help me come up with some more affordances to add for Paper and Pencil. And they did! Mindy reminded me that paper and pencil can not only by used anywhere (which I already had), but that it could also be accessed anywhere. She also suggested that I could add to my list of affordances that it is cheap. Which is something that I didn't think of.

I enjoyed being able to make an initial draft of our affordance analysis and then being able to have our peers read over and help us come up with suggestions. I know it always helps me to have someone else read my work and help me think of all the things that I have left out. It helps to have three other minds helping you think.

I posted my revised version of my affordance analysis just earlier this evening and I have already gotten a post back from someone in another group. It was interesting to see her viewpoint of my lesson and on kindergarten. She felt that the lesson I had come up with seemed like it would be a little too difficult for kindergarten students and that maybe I needed to rethink my intended audience. I responded back to her with a more in depth explanation of the lesson and even gave her an example of what the end product might look like. I hope after reading my response she will understand my rationale behind my lesson better and hopefully have a better understanding of how smart kindergarten students can be. I know as a kindergarten teacher I often feel like our students are not given enough credit. Although are sweet little babies come to us as blank slates a lot of the time they grow so much throughout the year. I hope that I was able to give her a better understanding of what great potential kindergarten students can reach!

After another week in this course I feel like I am continuing to learn more and more. I have been able to go back and read the postings, responses, and questions of my peers. After doing this I feel like I am learning a lot about my classmates and myself. After the learning theory assignment I saw how much we have in common as students and as teachers.

When reading the discussion section of questions for the professor it seems that I have a lot of the same questions the my classmates do and I am glad that they are asking them (before I get a chance to). And now that we are done with the first group assignment and class discussion I think I have a little better idea of what to do next time. (At least I hope!)

As for the technology categorization assignment this week I found that there are a whole lot of technologies out there that I was not aware of (even at my school). It was interesting to see all the technologies that my group members contributed. It was also interesting to look at the list of the other groups. It turns out that across the board we all have several technologies in common at out schools. I thought that it was neat that there are elementary teachers and high school teachers using the same technologies (I am sure a lot more in depth for the older students). It was nice to discuss and explain some of the technologies that I had listed to members of other groups. After this assignment I have learned that next time we have to choose postings to be graded that I need to make sure to discuss things more with my group members. The two postings that I submitted were not as much of a discussion as I would have wanted them to be. Next time I need to make sure that I have more dialouge with my group members. Overall the assignment seemed to be a success. Alice was our group leader and she did an excellent job getting all of our lists compiled together and our assignemnt turned in on time.

After only two assignments in this course I feel like I have already learned a lot. The assignments so far have allowed me to reflect on myself as a teacher and as a learner. It has been valuable for me to read other posting of comments, questions, and assignments of my classmates. I have found that I have a lot of the same feelings about learning as they do and I definitely think that I have had some of the same questions as them.
After the first assignment of writing about our theory of learning I found that I have a lot in common with the majority of students in this course. It seems that like me most of my classmates learn best through hands-on meaningful activities. After having this discussion I found it very ironic that we as teachers are such strong learners ourselves. It seems that all of us a continuously learning whether it be at school or through any other area in our life.
Our second assignment was to create a list of all technologies we have at our school. I emailed our technology leader for our school to ask her for a complete list. I am very embarrassed to say that I was not aware of several of the materials (both hardware and software) that we have available in our building. I hope to be able to take advantage of some of them this upcoming school year. As for my group on Blackboard I feel like we have a very good list so far. We are still determining how we are going to categorize everything. I think it may end up being a little harder than I had first thought because there are going to be so many ways that they could be divided up.
So far I am really enjoying this course. I have already learned several new things (creating a blog) and I am looking forward to everything else that is to come.