I have enjoyed the self-training part, with the help of the people from Common Craft and their paper-people explanations, of course. As a teacher, I appreciate the way they explain and teach technology concepts that may be a bit hard to fully grasp if you're not immersed in current technology. A highlight has been reading everyone's blog and watching the digital stories. Impressive.
Besides Common Craft, which I will definitely revisit when I need to understand technology stuff better, I will continue to explore TeacherFirst Edge: Safe Web 2.0 in the Classroom . I like the way they present their information by highlighting the name of a program or site followed by the words 'reviewed here,' where you can read other teachers' opinions and experiences with that particualr program or site. They link blogs and videos, etc. Love the site!
I am excited to have discovered GoogleDocs (our team used it for planning today!), and Jing, a very practical tool that I know will come in handy later. Another program I absolutely enjoyed playing with is PhotoStory. I felt successful with it (very important so I dare try further...) and I can't wait to use it and teach it in the classroom.
When I started with Tool #1, I tried not to think of the 10 others...and I admit that by Tool #8, I totally felt on tech-overload. But perseverance pays off...now I have several questions that are fueling my interest to go further, and I see this blog as sort of my 'notebook.' Here, I have a record of my learning, a place to refer back to if I forget how to use a particular tech-tool, links to tutorials, samples of the technology I was able to use (yes!), and a support system made up of teachers who navigated through the same tasks and can help each other. It was not easy for me to complete the tasks, but absolutely wouldn't have it any other way!
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