Final Reflection

All in all, this course was quite interesting. Although I thought that perhaps a bit too much time was spent on each topic/tool that we covered, I did enjoy learning about web 2.0 tools, and there were definitely some new tricks I got about the tools with which I was already familiar. I especially liked the interactive spreadsheet project and the movie-making (the movie-making mostly because I've done it before professionally and it was fun to look at again).

Website

Although at the beginning of the course the website I designed seemed like a massive project, looking back on it makes me think that I made a mountain out of a molehill. The hardest part by far was the accumulation and annotation of the resource page, and in the end that probably only took about two hours to complete.
I'm not sure if I'd like to do an entire website in my classroom--for the most part, I think a blog would probably  be enough for my purposes. I'm a very hands-on person, and I sometimes find websites a bit impersonal, even if they are generally only for reference.

iMovie

Truth be told, this title is something of a misnomer, since I actually used Windows Live Movie Maker to complete this project--what can I say? I'm a PC through and through. I've made videos similar to this one before, but it's not my favorite format for relaying information. I'd rather have a discussion that play a movie any day; if I'd had videos to share of touring Italy, then I would likely have thought this exercise more useful, but as it was, I'm fairly pleased with the outcome.
The video I've created is a sample of what I might show a class I was hoping to take on a senior trip overseas. Enjoy.

Storybird

Although it was my own assigned web 2.0 tool, Storybird was by far my favorite. I love the idea of fostering creativity in my classroom, and Storybird is definitely conducive to this activity. I would find it especially useful in teaching my classes to translate from English to Latin, since students can sometimes get so caught up in the mechanics that they forget the story--to be able to separate the assignment into one-page sentences would probably help students to stay focused on both the Latin and the story itself.

Google Forms

After looking over the wiki about Google forms and creating my own, I've decided I'm absolutely in love with this tool. I always dread the amount of papers I expect I'll have to have students fill out for class, but if I can make all of mine on the computer, then I won't have to worry about loads of physical files or all the trees I'm killing. The only drawback I can see to forms is the fact that if I want them to fill something out at home, they might not have internet access, which would put a damper on things. Still, I find that scenario somewhat unlikely, and I'm hoping that if any students do have that problem, then I can let them fill out my forms at school. View the form I made here.

Inspiration

My Inspiration experience was an interesting one. I definitely think that it's a useful classroom tool, and teachers should be versed in how to use it, but I'm not sure how I can use it efficiently in my classes. As you can see from the example I created above, classical studies is a bit more complicated than your average unit of study. That was the simplest web I could think of, and it's not even complete! I had to leave out several major gods simply because there wasn't room for them on the chart. And when I start to think of the Julio-Claudian family tree, the mind boggles. Grammar isn't much better--there are four conjugations, five declensions, and so many odd adjective forms that it makes seasoned Latinists want to scream. I fear that an Inspiration chart on any of these topics would be more likely to make students crazy than actually help them.

PodBean

PodBean could potentially be a great advantage for a foreign language class, even in Latin, where pronunciation isn't necessarily a priority. The ability to hear and translate Latin is just as important as the ability to see and translate Latin at the university level, and starting a student on spoken translation as soon as possible would place him or her at a great advantage. I could also have a class make podcasts of their reading for the week to check on their progress in learning to pronounce, which would also be to their advantage. I can't think of a lot more uses for it in a Latin class, since most of what we do is light in conversation and heavy in written work, but those two options would be enough in themselves.