I decided to keep it that way and not attend the commencement. I have to say it’s a weird feeling – no closure so to speak…sort of along the lines of “if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” kind of weird. I guess when my diploma arrives I will hear the “sound” of the tree falling!

So, now it’s on to my next goal – gain an adjunct position at a college and teach part-time while I work full-time. Wish me luck!

I think a requisition to purchase Camtasia is in my future.

This class will show me how to really use Audacity instead of fumbling through by trial and error.  I really believe pod casting could be a helpful tool for me so I am glad to learn more about it in a workshop dedicated to this one topic instead of a class that requires one without much training.

I’ve got my whole netvibe thing going to keep up with all y’all and I survived this class.

I just have to finish my Online Teaching Toolkit for the other class and that’s almost finished. In that class I now have ice breakers, communication policies, student success strategies, direct instruction ideas, a weebly, a web-based photoshop tool, and I even learned about how many protons and electrons there are in an element…but I can’t remember which element….Chris…help!

Hope you all have learned some great stuff as well. And to a few of you – see you Monday in our next class with Dr. Ingram!

I lead the podcast discussion.  It has had sporadic traffic throughout these last five weeks.  I chose pod casting since it was something I had heard about but never really investigated.  Those who posted came up with some interesting ideas for using pod casts in the classroom ~ reading to younger children ~ book reviews ~ foreign language study ~ and one person is considering using a pod cast for a chemistry assignment.  While the discussion never reached fever pitch, the contributions were excellent examples of teachers sharing their knowledge and ideas!  A great use of the discussion thread and worth the effort to read.

My  other class this term also required me to lead a discussion topic.  I found in both circumstances that it is challenging to know when to reply and when to let others respond.  I know I did not want to reply to every post as the leader, I hope I managed to respond enough but not too much.  I think that is a skill that is acquired over time.

Seriously though, I am really enjoying learning all this technology! It is really amazing what is out there. I spoke to someone the other day who got his master’s in Instructional Technology 10 years ago….yes, that was available then…he said it was more about how to put a cassette tape into a VCR…how funny is that!

I have some ideas to use Quandary to build some self-help exercises for EMIS coordinators. My thought is that some FAQ exercises could be converted to Quandary mazes and people could help themselves. One question we get quite often revolves around connecting to eSIS from home. a series of self-help questions and answers could easily be done with Quandary.

And on to Moodle…a few months ago I saw a presentation from a staffer from the Maine DOE. They use Moodle for an online certification program based around their data quality campaign. I contacted the staffer and he was kind enough to do a demo for me today to show me how they use Moodle. They have really developed some nice things. One thing they have is a google map that shows them where their participants are located – it shows how far-flung we can be while all being “together”. Anyway – it was a cool use of Moodle. I am considering using it to take some workshops I do now as F2F to online with Moodle.

I just love this whole learning thing!