I am FINISHED!!!!!

With the help of my good friend Joel I was finally able to produce a slideshow and embed it in my blooming blog! I will not be able to do it again by myself without help, but lucky for me, I have smart friends. And, like so many other things technological, I will finally get it with enough slow, deliberate repetition. Signing off for now!

One Last Thing

Now actually this isn't one last thing. I still have to go back and get my slideshow done tomorrow, but I wanted to do my reflection in peace. I must say even though I did my share of whining, or really a lot more than my share, I had a BLAST! I loved the format of the class, but it really helped to take this with friends nearby...sometimes to help, sometimes to calm each other down, sometimes just to listen to frustration.

My favorite discoveries were Library Thing, Googledocs, Wordle,and my blog. But if I could only use one,it would definitely be my Google reader with my RSS feeds. It keeps me up to date on everything I care to know about.

The program has reignited my love of learning and probably fired up some new dendrites. It made me realize I've been getting stagnant and I appreciate the push from Richard and Deryl.

The biggest surprise for me was that I could do it. I have a certain reputation for being technologically fragile...I think I'm beginning to feel a little braver.I would absolutely do another program like this. In fact, in a week or two,I'll probably even miss Mary releasing the next 5 things to do!

This class will definitely influence my job. I have told my facilitators to enroll so we'll all know the same cool tricks. I think it can only improve our communication with teachers and administrators. I will keep up primarily by using my reader. I have several feeds about curriculum and about technology that should keep me going.And I plan on going back over the 23 Things materials for some further exploration.

Mary and Debbie, thanks for everything. You have been wonderful and the materials were great. Loved the Common Craft videos. It's like 2.0 for dummies.I began this journey as The Terrified Traveler. I leave it as The Adventurer. Tomorrow, who knows, maybe Captain Kirk!!

Thing #20

I had already attended a workshop on using Googledocs, but as usual, I didn't start using it right away so I forgot about it! I played around very briefly in this exercise with a document about New Teacher Camp. I will really use this to collaborate with my facilitators to begin making plans. It will save us so much time, especially since they don't work during the summer. It's like a conference call without the phone. They'll be able to offer input and changes and we can do it all from different places.

I also played around with the presentation tools. Loved them! Not only can we plan New Teacher and lots of other staff development but we can also collaborate on the slides we'll use during the presentation. I loved the slide layouts for organizational purposes. They will be of service to me as my layout skills are right up there with my slideshow skills!

There are as many uses for Googledocs as there are things to do, to organize, to plan, to study, etc. I'm sure as I begin to use Googledocs more, I will begin to think of all kinds of applications for it in my personal and professional life.

Thing #12

OMG! Will this assignment ever end??I have really struggled with this one. While selecting the photos was easy,getting them into a slide show with links and attributions was something else. I looked on with envy as I saw others post slide shows and embed them into their blogs. As I write this post, I have been working for 4 hours trying to figure this out for myself. And this is the 4th time that I have devoted so much time to this same task. But alas, I will have to ask for help tomorrow. I WILL finish this class on time, even if I have to get tutoring. I'll start a new trend...slide show acceleration. I'm going to close this blog for now. Perhaps someone will rescue me before that infernal countdown clock on the 23 things Ning beats me.

Thing # 14

Okay, I'm definitely going to spend more time on this one later. I had a blast playing around. I did a wordle using my son's name and some of his personal characteristics. What a great idea for a project when kids are studying characters... puttting words that really describe the character more than once so they're bigger. I love this! I still haven't figured out quite how to save my work and show you, but I'm going to figure that out. Just you wait.
I also played with ToonDoo...another fun one. I made a single frame cartoon of me flying through the air saying hooray for me and tagged it with 23things. Imagine!! Really had a lot of fun with this one. I'll be doing lots more in this playground!

Thing # 15

I have set up a delicious account. http://delicious.com/sedonagal At first I didn't see much use for it because I was perfectly happy with the list of bookmarks that my browser kept for me. But after spending some time with delicious I can see some definite advantages. First of all, the fact that I can keep one list of bookmarks and access them from any computer. That's a big help. Also the tagging is a great help. I hadn't thought about using tags so much, but as I discover more sites and join more groups, it will be very helpful to tag things so that I don't have to bring up the whole list of bookmarks when I'm looking for just one topic.Lastly, the social component. It is interesting and could be enormously helpful to share other people's bookmarks who share some of the same areas of concern at work. I personally have used Mary's sites more than once to find new directions to look for things. That is primarily how I see using it for work...tagging and sharing.

Thing # 21

Just want to go on record as saying I love Google. It has so many amazing free features. I did set up Googlecalendar as an experiment. The only problem is that it keeps reminding me of all the things I put on it when I was just playing around! I can see that it could become a very useful tool. I also set up an iGoogle page and added some recipes , news alerts and a Spanish word a day. I still need to spend more time here. Another participant said his iGoogle page is his home page. I might have to try that.I also spent way too much time on Google Book Search, looking at all the great classics you can just start reading, right there on the computer. It really is amazing!