Inquiry Project Reflection

Completing my inquiry project was a long and tedious process. I honestly exerted a great deal of effort on this project from start to finish. It took several weeks and hours of work to complete. First, I had a lot of difficulty deciding on a topic and finding sources. My first question turned out to be too broad, so I had to come up with another one. Once I finally settled on GarageBand, I was excited to see the different possibilities for incorporating the program into my classroom in meaningful ways; yet actually finding decent resources took a great deal of time. There were not many formal resources available, so I had to search several different places and various terms. That required some creative thinking. Once I found my sources, the project was much more manageable. However, the screencast was also challenging for me. Figuring out how to use Jing was very simple, but I kept messing up my speech. I had to re-do it several times and finally realized it was not going to be perfect. I hope I did not have too many mess-ups. It was a great learning experience.

Completing this task was very valuable to me because I learned so many ways in which I can incorporate GarageBand into my classroom. Besides that, I learned how to use Jing, and believe I would use it in the future or have my students use it if they are unable to present live or feel more comfortable using Jing. This could help those who are extremely shy or home sick and unable to present live. I also learned how important it is as an educator to inquire about the uses of tools and technology. There is no possible way that one teacher could know all of the best practices without consulting sources or other educators. The internet is such a valuable tool for this. Having that mindset will surely lead to a better, more meaningful education for my students. Also, the screencast process made me realize that I need to practice my public speaking. This is something I believe will get better in time.

This project affects my future teaching because I will surely incorporate what I learned. I believe that I will use the 5 best practices that I found in my future classroom, especially because it can be used at any grade level. I believe this will benefit my students, because I am now more likely to search the web for best practices for using any other tool that I come across that I want to use. After all, before doing the research, I had only considered using GarageBand for podcast creation. Now I see that there are a number of other possibilities and benefits that come from using this wonderful program!