Is It The End Or Just The Beginning?

Here are my personal thoughts on 23 Things. Overall it was a helpful exercise. It executed what was necessary for this course which is a strengthening of usage of technology for the classroom. There were plenty of ideas and helpful tools shared throughout the Things. At this project's closing, here are my final thoughts:

This is a sixteen week course. Limit 23 Things to 16 Things and have one Thing due each week (this can be checked at anytime by seeing the submission date). I am not saying to drop 7 Things. What I am saying is maybe drop one or two that may be outdated or redundant, combine a couple of the easier assignments, and make this an assignment that can be kept up with and managed throughout the semester. This would almost eliminate the issue of students waiting until the last minute to complete these assignments, and most likely doing a less than outstanding job at completion. That is my two cents.

To conlude, I enjoyed many of these Things. Animoto was outstanding. Pageflakes is now a permanent homepage on my personal laptop. Social networking was a given, but please look into Google+ instead of so much weight on Twitter/Facebook. Just a thought. YouTube is essential for those who aren't as familiar with it. Livebinder was awful, but that is just personal opinion. I liked that Wiki was recognized and included. Frankly, I don't think it's the evil website tool that many at university level like to make it out to be, though I do understand not using it for a major research assignment. Thing 14 was another project I found relevant, but confusing. I can only imagine how difficult some of these Things are for people who lack basic computer skills and knowledge. Thing 12 was a great area for learning much more about Google (again Google+ can be touched on in this area). Thing 9 and Thing 8 were fun and were interesting as far as creativity for teachers. Thing 4 was a given, but may be a good learning tool for those new to social networking and blogging.

All in all I learned a lot from this course. The instruction was incredible. The only other improvement would perhaps be to make sure the 23 Things align with what LiveText assignments we are currently working on or getting ready to cover. Otherwise, keep up the great ideas. This obviously took time to put together, and I certainly learned a lot. I will walk away from this course a better expert at powerpoint, word, excel, and flikr, just to name a few. Thank you.