Week 2 Reflection

What have I learned?
What a wonderful question; I learned that I am about as competent technologically as I thought! When I took typing in high school the minimum criterion was to type at least 23 words a minute with less than five errors. When I couldn’t do that by the end of the semester, despite diligent effort, I had a “little visit” from my typing teacher. I’ll never forget the morning she came and knelt next to my typing table (yes, back in the day!) and told me, ever so sweetly, that she would be willing to pass me for the semester, if I would be willing to drop the second semester class. (I translated that to mean, “never take typing again.” !)

What relief we both experienced! But you can imagine the amount of trepidation I have had to overcome to enter this new age, can’t you? And oh, how I long to type with fluent automaticity. Of course, with sheer practice and determination, I have become faster and more accurate; however…!

In addition to developing better keyboarding skills, I have had to become tenacious enough to stick with figuring out what has to be done. For instance, you may recall that I wanted to create an avatar. Nicole’s directions were explicit, carefully laid out, and paralleled the instructions on yahoo, the site I ended up using. But – it took me about three hours to find my way around, figure out the instructions to develop my figure, save it, verify that I had it, lose it, and have to recreate it.

Or had I lost it after all? Had I been I looking in the proper folder or was I just a tab away?! One thing I find to be very true is that details are so crucial to understanding; I’m a broad concepts kind of gal, which causes me to have to read, try, and reread to discover the nuances that the author fully intended I grasp on first reading.

After word: only by accident, did I ever get the avatar loaded on my profile. My fourth hour was spent trying to export my avatar. No kidding. After I spent ages studying three pages open simultaneously on my screen just to find “export,” I then spent that much more time trying to make the export happen. I’ll spare you the details other than to say that nothing worked, even after I knew it should. Then, again accidentally, I noticed I could download rather than export; I saved the avatar to my desktop and voila, could get my blog to accept it. Never mind that I then discovered it wasn’t the exact figure I’d saved in yahoo…!

Bottom line: I have learned that educational technology acquisition, for me, has to be a combination of perseverance embedded in windows of opportunity, e.g., grabbing pockets of time as they come along, if I am going to accomplish my goals. I couldn’t have done this in past years, when I had kids at home, or had other extended family and community responsibilities. Humbling and motivating.

How did I feel about starting a blog?
In addition to the technology issues I described, I am a fairly private person, so blogging in the public eye has certainly pushed my envelope! My original intent was to acquire something for my students, and that has carried me through the learning curve, as well as through the ambivalence I felt about starting a blog.

What do I not want to forget to include in my classroom blog, and how can blogging be used in the classroom or in my educational role?
LOL - allow “more than enough” time! Start small!
I also want to remember to be personal in the midst of being a professional with my students, and I want to be as encouraging and supportive of my learners as our facilitators have been with us. If I have been challenged by this work, then I need to remember that many of my students will be, too. How can I help them, even inspire them, to set authentic learning goals and work toward them?

Should I use this in the classroom or my educational role?
This course-specific blog doesn’t fit in my classroom, nor do I pretend my words here will gather an ongoing following. That said, I know I have been opened to a marvelous world of professional reflection that will lead me to share URLs with colleagues. I recognize the charge to become a contributor and can imagine participating online in that way.

Questions I still have about blogging:
1. RSS feeds still escape me; I keep thinking I have subscribed, but don’t believe that is the case. And when is it preferable to keep up via an email feed versus keeping up via a Reader, or whatever? Is there a way to add a blog from its site, or is it necessary to copy the blog’s URL and paste it into a window at the RSS site?

2. What organizational systems are best for keeping up with blogs, along with curriculum sites and professional development sites that the blogs lead us to?