I have learned more in this class than I had expected to. I really loved doing Google Hangouts with people from all over the country in class, and it is definitely a tool that I am going to carry with me through my teaching career. Before taking this course, I never viewed Twitter as more than a site to post funny things to. I rarely used it because there was too much drama. Now, I see that Twitter, as well as other social media sites, can be used to interact with people all over the world in order to enhance your life. You can literally find anything on Twitter, from DIY projects to discussions about education to who won the Eagles game (...the Eagles won yesterday, by the way ;) ). I now use my professional Twitter at least ten times more than I use my personal account because I am always finding new blogs to follow to become a better teacher and articles that will be useful in the future.
Learning about Evernote was one of my favorite things in this class because it allows me to organize all of the articles and blogs that I find. I still have a ways to go before I become a teacher, and Evernote allows me to categorize everything I find so that I am able to revisit the information when I need it later. I also know that Paper.li is going to be extremely helpful because it will summarize everything that happened during that week. If I am away or too busy to keep up every day, this is a great way for me to be able to check out what I missed.
Although we have learned countless other tools, these are the things that I connected with the most and that I know I will continue to use after the semester is over. I plan on forcing myself to interact more on Twitter so that I can get all that there is to get out of it, and I definitely plan on continuing to use Evernote to organize. I am especially excited to show my class a Mystery Skype when the time comes! I look forward to interacting more with my PLN on Twitter, and was completely shocked at the amount of followers I received because of participating in #edchat. Many of those people direct messaged me to let me know that they were there if I had any questions, and it is so nice to know that I have that support system. Because of this, I will continue using Twitter to interact with these people.
