Thing 23: My Reflection!

What a fun journey this has been! I knew about few things but had never attempted to use it. ..this gave me a chance to learn and use. I think the 23 Things blog site is so wonderful, the videos are very easy to follow and the instruction/ direction were so simple. I help the teachers to get trained in technology and this has given me so many tools to use in my training and information sessions. . My thinking has definitely changed about Web 2.0. It has opened my mind and made me realize that as educators we are going to have to change our ways of teaching and communicating because the students are learning in different and more advanced ways.
Has this program changed how you view of the Internet or how you view education in the digital world?
Yes, there is so much still left to be explored the possibilities are endless. It is important for educators to keep up with the changing technology. At CMA there are about 12 teachers who have formed a learning group on Wiki to learn 23 Things. There is so much of discussions and exchange of ideas to integrate and implement technology. The notion, that new technology is hard to incorporate and expensive, is totally removed after this training. The staff is exploring and excited about this and it is amazing how easy and free of cost most of the things are. I hope that RESA will continue to offer classes like this one to help educators change with the times.
Google Docs enables multiple people in different locations to collaborate simultaneously on the same doc from any computer with Internet access. For example, as a parent helper for my son's Tennis Team I was working with 4 other parents on putting together the information session for new "tennis" Parents for the open house, and they need to write a document, keep track of their work in a spreadsheet, and create a presentation to share with other people involved in the project. We met twice but still all of us could work on this at our own time....
When I made changes to the document, spreadsheet, or presentation, other parents could see them in real time and respond to them immediately. All of us worked on the same docs, so there was no need to go back and forth, comparing and consolidating individual files. SlideShare can be very useful if used properly. Delicious is so convenient to use and such a time saver.
Overall, this was a very useful, productive, 100% hands-on, informative and enpowering session. Thanks for the fun trip...I'm excitead & ready to use these tools!!!