Course Review: Cheesy

My motivation for taking this course is tactile. I spent many hours in grad school theorizing and discussing issues in education with an abstract and pensive approach. I didn't take this course to postulate and speculate on the pros and cons of using technology in the classroom, I took this course to become literate (as the course title suggests) in an increasingly digital world. I know I want to use technology in my class, I know that technology has the power to increase student engagement. I know that if student engagement is enhanced that learning is a likely result. I know that as a teacher I want that result.

So the question is, has this course increased my information and technology literacy and by extension student engagement and learning? I'll use my favorite subject to help answer this question- that subject of course is food. When I came to ISB, my technology skills were at about the goat cheese stage (aged for less than 3 weeks...I could email and surf the web). Before taking this course I was at about the swiss cheese stage (aged for 6-14 months... I knew how to use a smartboard, voicethread, notebook. Six months at ISB produces a pretty tasty swiss). After course 1 of COETAIL I'm happy to say that I'm entering the stage of a parmigiano reggiano (aged up to 7 years... I can use an RSS reader, I can embed links and video in my blog posts, and I can use use search syntax to find resources) I'm probably on year 1 of the aging process as I write this. At this rate, with 4 more classes left, I should age another 5 years by next spring when we finish the certificate.

I wanted practical skills from this course. You can't get more practical than cheese. I look forward to maturing, technologically speaking, into a very 'sharp', saavy, and literate 21st century teacher.