Reflection on Intro to Teaching with Digital Tools

I had been wanting to create a website for some time, but wasn't sure how to get started. I was pleased to learn that my Intro to Teaching with Digital Tools course at Rutgers would help me to do just that. I had a general idea of what I wanted to do, but I needed some help with developing it. Through the feedback provided by the instructor and my classmates, I got the help that I needed and I am very happy with the end result, which can be found at www.expandingunderstanding.org. (By the time that you read this, my site will have likely grown beyond what it was at the end of the course as I intend to continue working on it indefinitely.)

The purpose of my website is to inspire wonder as it relates to the exploration of our universe. My hope is that, by visiting my site, people will gain some new-found perspective with regard to their place in the universe and just how big the universe really is. I have included videos, links to resources, and other tools to help people to visualize what is beyond human experience. 

After doing some research to find the best platform to use in creating my website, I decided to use Wix. In hindsight, I am glad that I chose it. I have received some very positive feedback and have even been told by others in the course that they wished that they had chosen Wix after seeing my site. I can't say that there is anything that I didn't like about using Wix. The only thing that I had trouble with was a clip art image that I chose. The background for that image was supposed to be clear, but for some reason, it came out white. I was unable to fix it, so I contacted support. While it took them a while to resolve the issue, they did fix it, and I am happy with the result. That little orange rocket might not mean anything to anyone else, but I have become a bit attached to it. Other than that, though, I found Wix to be very easy to use. I can't imagine an easier tool to use for creating a website, so I highly recommend it.

If I had any advice or recommendations for future students working on this project, I would tell them to take it one step at a time. If you work on it a little almost every day, it will come together quite nicely. And don't stress the proposal phase too much. What you propose is not necessarily set in stone. Allow yourself to experiment a bit along the way. You will find that some ideas that you had may not work as well as you had hoped, while other things that you hadn't considered come to you through the process. That's what it's all about, the process. Going through the process is what helps us to learn all the concepts that this course is meant to convey. And, if you trust that process, you will likely produce a product that you are as happy with as I am with mine.