Looking back on this course, I see a huge change in my attitude, confidence and skill level about building a website. I have worked a bit on the website that my school provides for me, but always felt as though I really never quite knew what I was doing. I began this course feeling rather helpless and lost. I really wanted to learn how to build a website, but really did not know the vocabulary or any of the tools to do so.
In my first class, I was very disappointed to learn that we were building our website on an OSU tool and that I was limited on how my website would look. I was also disappointed that we were using WordPress, as that is not something I use at school. Since I was taking this class to renew my teaching license, I felt that I might learn something minor that I could use and that, at least, I would get the class credit for my license. However, I felt that I would not take much away that was REALLY useful.
You can imagine my absolute joy when I found out that I can make a website on WordPress and maintain it for FREE! Not only that, but with only a few clicks, I transferred everything that I worked on in class right to my new site! That little, tiny bit of information completely changed what I get to walk away with from this class. I am not walking away with knowledge on how to build a website that I’ll never use. I am going to be using it a lot and in conjunction with the site I have already at Dublin. I am so very excited about that!!
I am going to be developing more units on-line much like the learning unit we did in class. So often I have had to let things go due to absences or people not taking certain prerequisites to other classes. But now, these units will not be skipped, but I also do not have to take time in class to reteach. These units will be available not only to students who missed a class or unit, but to all my students to use for review and reinforcement of the material before testing!
I even plan to put on-line testing on here for kids. I am not sure if it will be used to actually test, or just to allow kids to test their own knowledge. Letting kids figure out for themselves if they know the material is most valuable at the high school level. High school administrators are always pushing to get us to use ore technology. For theatre, that is actually kind of hard sometimes, but I think I have finally hit the jackpot.
I will say that I felt like I never really learned all that much in class. What I got is some quick basic information on what I have to ability to do. We also got assignments on stuff that I had to just figure out or go on-line and search for tutorials. Then I had to go home and sit, play, test, re-test , play some more, experiment, click on that, click on this, and go back and start over. The thing is with all that time just sitting and experimenting, I really learned quite a bit. I feel very confident that I can use WordPress. I feel really confident about adding photos, links and embedding both video and things like google calendar. I actually did not really understand that embedding was! But the ability to embed my google calendar and have it not just be a posted calendar, but alive calendar that will update any time I update is absolutely priceless. I am ok about building things, but not so good sometimes about upkeep. This calendar will keep itself up-to-date!! I am still not all that sure about blogging, but I am going to have a page for updates on what is going on in Drama Club. I guess that is kind of a blog.
I guess if I had to say one thing that I am probably the least confident on is Photoshop. Even though I was able to create all of the assigned Photoshop projects, I still kind of feel like I got lucky when I happen to get it to work. I do not feel that I have to ability to teach anyone anything on it. I have some minor abilities with it, but nothing too impressive.
Overall, I really appreciate the way this class was executed. We were given tons of time to do what we needed to do, lots of flexibility to get it done, and help whenever we needed it. Thank you so much for all of your help!!
