The takeaway...

There have been so many new and exciting things I have learned in the Online and Blended Learning course. I had already taught a two-way course and done the planning for teaching an online course, but the tools I have found through this course and the ideas on how to use them will help me to improve my face-to-face courses.

I have in the past created technology-based activities for my students, especially in the French courses I teach. I have been teaching French for many more years than I have been teaching English, so I have been looking for activities and ideas much longer for French. I have learned from experience and had the idea reinforced in this course that just because it involves technology, it does not make it better or more interesting (for the teacher or the student). I confess to spending hours online playing with French-oriented websites and rejecting them because I found them boring or pedagogically unhelpful. There are also sites that I skimmed over or outright dismissed as possibilities in the past that I would now consider as of possible use in my classroom. That opening of possibility is one of the most important takeaways from this course. The course readings and the ideas of my classmates/colleagues (who are also exploring new ideas) have led me to think about different ways of considering some of the tools presented. The class discussions and the links to others' projects have been especially helpful in demonstrating the usefulness of many tools. Beyond those specific tools, they have encouraged me to be more open to looking at others' lessons in many subjects and to consider how new tools or ideas used in those lessons might be used in engaging new ways for my students. For my English classes, I have found new resources and different ways to present some of the literature and grammar we will cover.

I will continue to look to my colleagues for ideas and to push myself to think just a little further about what I could do with tools presented and used in this course, and about how I can make my current classes more engaging with tools I have seen and have yet to find. I will continue to work toward an online version of my French courses, although there is no current plan in my district for implementing an online foreign language. Should an opportunity or need arise for such a course, I can have it ready to go. Meanwhile, the online course can be a way for me to play with the ideas in this course.