Thing 11.5

Evaluation

1. Favorite discoveries. There were many! My all time favorite was the Voki! I have already turned several people on to them. Wordle, wordsift and bookr are all things I will use in my class. Skype- LOVE IT!! Jing, I'm looking for a microphone and anxious to try. And of course as soon as school starts I'm ordering an itouch. Really can't wait for that one. There were lots of "things" in this program that I really hooked on to.
2. How has this class affected my lifelong learning goal. Well, I went to the petting zoo class last week because I was motivated to continue my quest to learn about technology. My teenage children are so involved in it and I don't want to have my head in the sand, besides, it's really fun! I look forward to more exploration on my computer. I still don't consider myself very good with technology but I feel more confident and more motivated to continue learningand using technology. I'm not a dinosaur yet!
3. Any surprises? Yes- Second life was one. I still have my reservations but see the advantages and opportunities it has. I also see how it brings digital citizenship into play. I was walking around a make believe place but so were all kinds of other kids at the same time and I could see them and chat with them if I wanted to. This gave me much to think about. New perspective.
4. Improvements or differences? I liked the number of things this time. It was much more manageable. I think I'll have lots of fun new "things" to start the year with. This was a great set of new things. I look forward to the next one. Thanks!

Thing 11

This one was rather interesting and made me think about the BIG picture. I did not know what digital citizenship was and It took a little reading for me to get the idea. I frind it rather interesting to consider myself and my students as worldwide citizens with others on the web. Being an elementary teacher of special needs children, I think the year should begin with some tech training (even though most of our lessons are guided by me). Verifying and having several sources for information is key. Being respectful of others that we encounter is key as well. I think each computer lesson as we go along should come with some ettiquete right from the start. I have a totally new perspective on our "citizenship" in the great world ( it gets smaller all the time) of the web, and as my training continues so does my responsibility.