Personal Evaluation of the Course "New Media"
How I Started...
The end of the semester is getting closer and
many weeks of dealing with new media are almost over now. I have not really had
any specific expectations when I started the class, the only thing I knew was:
I am not a new media person. I don’t know much about it and I don’t like it
that much – for whatever reason. This is what I wrote on my eportfolio at the
beginning of the semester: “Honestly, I am absolutely not familiar with
new media except for using facebook and that ordinary kind of stuff. That is
why I am very excited about getting to know new and useful tools and maybe I
will overcome my prejudices against the whole new media -"mania".“
Where I Am Now...
If you keep that in mind it is even more
amazing that now, after having had a class on new media for one semester, I
have another opinion about it. I would not necessarily say that I am addicted
to using new media by now, but I am in favor of using it and I can imagine
integrating useful tools in my classroom.
Indicators For Why This Is the Case...
The reason for me saying that I am
getting closer to really like new media is the fact that I talk about it quite
a lot with different people, that I recommend certain tools to other people and
that I actually use some of the tools for other seminars and private activities
already!
Learning by doing...October 2010 until Fabruary 2011
General Remarks...
Generally, the seminar was very useful to me. The theoretical background information which we got thanks to the wonderful ;-) reading assignments was interesting (although not all texts, but some!) and made it clear that the topic new media is a wide field of research. Today, we don’t know the effects of using new media for the learning of students which makes it almost ever feel like an experiment if you use new media tools at school. Anyway, we live in a time where almost every student owns a cellphone, a laptop, computer or even an iPhone. School has to go with the time and that is why teachers have to update their knowledge on technological innovations regularly. Thanks to this seminar, I at least feel a bit more comfortable when thinking about my competence regarding new media, different tools and their integration into my English classroom later! I know that I am not an expert but I got an impression about what is possible nowadays. You can do almost everything online, using different tools.
Classes like new media are useful for future teachers as they are oriented towards a practical approach or, in other words, towards appliance. The syllabus is, in my opinion, good and the tasks we had to do in order to get credits were okay as well, although the five extra tasks could be reduced to four. The e-portfolio is, of course, a nice way of using a new media tool for getting credits. That makes sense indeed! At first, I nearly got a heart attack when I heard that we had to do an eportfolio, but after a certain time I really started to like working on it as you can hopefully see. The field trips to Kirchhain and to the Sprachenzentrum were interesting and have shown where and how new media is applied. The discussions in class and the way they were organized (e.g. the different groups we had for the school conference) were nice. I like most of the tools we got to know and I am wondering how many other good tools are there outside in the big world of the internet that we could have been introduced to as well if we have had the time??!!
Classes like new media are useful for future teachers as they are oriented towards a practical approach or, in other words, towards appliance. The syllabus is, in my opinion, good and the tasks we had to do in order to get credits were okay as well, although the five extra tasks could be reduced to four. The e-portfolio is, of course, a nice way of using a new media tool for getting credits. That makes sense indeed! At first, I nearly got a heart attack when I heard that we had to do an eportfolio, but after a certain time I really started to like working on it as you can hopefully see. The field trips to Kirchhain and to the Sprachenzentrum were interesting and have shown where and how new media is applied. The discussions in class and the way they were organized (e.g. the different groups we had for the school conference) were nice. I like most of the tools we got to know and I am wondering how many other good tools are there outside in the big world of the internet that we could have been introduced to as well if we have had the time??!!
Evaluation of New Media Course Without Suggestions
Our Seminar...
I especially liked the atmosphere in the seminar which was first of all due to an instructor who was very respectful, friendly, honest (not every teacher would admit his or her attitude towards the subject he or she teachers honestly at the beginning of the seminar) and cooperative and secondly due to a relatively small number of students who developed their interest for new media throughout the seminar together. Many of us had a rather negative picture in mind before the start of the class and throughout the semester the group got closer together. The social interaction among the students was friendly. What I liked as well was the seminar blog you could consult all the time in order to be up-to-date and the complaint box which again showed the teacher’s willingness to change and consider certain things and make the class as useful as possible for us. In addition, the feedback we got in written form was very detailed and helpful. Thanks for that! I got the impression that this seminar could have a subtitle like “the way is the goal” and I am sure that this way was worth going!
'The way is the goal' - Investigate, help and learn from each other! Making friends with new media - together with the whole class.
Suggestions...
I would like to mention some points that could be improved in my opinion for future classes. First of all, the tools we got to know could be introduced in class and the students could have time to actually practice to work with the tools. How does Weebly work? How do I create a prezi? How can I change colors in Wordle or print a Wordle? There should just be more time to work with the tools and not just to introduce them. If you do that in class and not at home, the results and learning effect would be higher I am sure. Furthermore, homework should only be given if it is useful. The taking pictures of things that have something to do with English in my life was very time-consuming and I was a bit sad that it was (I know, there is always a learning effect for everything!!) kind of useless as we did not talk about our pictures intensively. We could have talked about the flickr tool without that homework indeed! Well, I think that’s all I have to say. As you can see it is not very much which is good for you. Keep it up!
Last But Not Least...
I hope that you have fun teaching the upcoming
new media class as well and I can only speak for myself, but I (apart from the
first two sessions when I did not know what the class would be like) have
always liked to come to class due to the reasons mentioned above and also to
work on my eportfolio which I have also shown to some of my friends in order to
show them different tools and what I have done!
Summarized: Thumbs Up!
Pictures taken from (frmo top to bottom):
http://www.becksche.de/de/Autorensatzsysteme.html
http://www.carookee.com/forum/bruecke-ins-nichts/58/26041326
http://www.becksche.de/de/offline_online_DVD_CD.html
