Finito!

After lots of learning, exploring and experimenting, here I am at the end of this 12 week journey into Web technologies. I know that in some ways I have barely scratched the surface of some of the tools that I have explored, having to be content with what I have been able to give time to. I have, however, gained in confidence in my ability to grapple with new technologies and overcome a bit of an anxiety that ' it's all just a bit too much'  to get into 21st century technologies. What I probably need is a week with nothing but a laptop, a list of interesting webtools to explore and plenty of uninterrupted time to investigate and learn more thoroughly.

I have appreciated the opportunity to explore through the structure of the course and the benefit of doing it over a few months rather than trying to cram it into a couple of intensive PD days. The plan back at school will now be to get some of the 12 staff from Hillcrest who have participated in this course to volunteer to run some training sessions on a tool they found interesting to other staff in the College so as to spread the expertise through the school community. As for me, I shall lead a session on setting up and using a Wiki page as I have already set up a wiki for the College Exec and they are busily working out the ins and outs of how to use it to their advantage. It's all part of a passion for creating a professional learning community with ICT technologies as one platform for cultural transformation

Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this learning journey :)

eBooks

I think that eBooks will find their place in the same sphere as other technologies - a good parallel option for those who prefer an electronic version of a text rather than a hard copy. I must admit that I am still a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to books - I like to physically pick one up and turn actual pages rather than read a page on a screen and turn it electronically. It just doesn't have the same feel.... It's interesting that I have made the adjustment with photo collections - most of the photos I see these days are digitally saved on a computer or iPhone or camera; but as for books or magazines, I still appreciate the paper version far more that the e-version.

Will it always be thus? Forever is quite a long time and I am keen to keep up with technology so I'll probably bite the bullet in the near future and have a go at downloading a couple of books from the World eBook Fair or similar - more to say that I can do it rather than any particular drive to rad eBooks.

The other issue is time - or the lack thereof..... I probably wont do justice to the long list of books I'd love to read. Once I can create a space in my life to do so, well that will be another matter. Meanwhile a Masters essay beckons, a big pile of unread Educational Journals lies dormant on my desk, a number of Exec issues are pressing and, oh yes, some Year 12 Chemistry marking I promised to get back to the students ASAP.

TUBESVILLE

I have been very aware of Youtube for some time now - kind of impossible to avoid it really with 3 teenage children and a wanne teenage 9 year old roaming around my house from dawn to dawn (yes - they occasionally sleep...). I have even seen an uploaded video from my 9 yo who decided that she wanted to be on Youtube as well as the rest of the world... Like all technology like this, Youtube has its good side and its dangers. I have seen some wonderful, creative, nostalgic material; I have also unfortunately seen some junk I would have much preferred to not see. The other sites I am enjoying exploring are Teachertube and Godtube. I have found a Chemistry promo film from 1941 which I am planning to show my Year 12 class this week and I am sure that there are other valuable resources to uncover on both of these sites.

PODCASTS

Podcasts are brilliant but there are just so many of them!! I really appreciated the list of 15 to explore as well as the BIG lists of various podcast links in the email. There are a number which need to be investigated further although to be honest it may take me some time to see podcasts and RSS feeds as the MAIN source of information and learning. I'm still inundated with far too many paper-based journals and articles. Trying to wade through them and then make time on top of that for regular podcast absorption, RSS feed inspection etc is a bit of a stretch at the moment.

ROLLYO SHMOLLYO

This is the first real dud I have had all course - I just couldn't access the site. Even time I put in the web address, it came up with this message: didn't connect - Too many connections

Not sure where to go with this one - any ideas anyone? I'd be more than happy to revisit this site - it sounds interesting and useful!

Oh well, to make up for it I'll embed a music video instead

As well as a Claude Monet painting for no reason other than its artistic beauty :)

WATERTIGHT WIKI

I thought it was about time I put some of this learning into actual practice so I created a Wiki for the Executive team at the College where I work so the the school leaders could have a go at creating pages and editing one another's ideas. I realised once I had created it and put up the first page that it really wasn't appropriate for general viewing - any more than the minutes from a meeting of the Exec team so I made it a private wiki - accessible only to invited members. It will be a bit of a learning curve for all of us digital immigrants to become familiar with this technology but as a school community who are seeking to embed technology in the classroom we should be aiming to upskill those in senior leadership so the call to technological adaptation and embrace is rich and full, not hollow and hypocritical. It will remain to be seen if the wiki takes off and the rest of the Exec team take to it. I, for one, and having fun learning how to navigate around it :)

DELICIOUS? Well maybe not but still it's quite tasty....

I must admit I was a bit underwhelmed by Del.i.ci.ou.s  (too many full stops, I know...)  I'm not quite sure what I was expecting but to dedicate a whole website to tagging bookmarks seemed a bit of overkill. I suppose that my modest Bookmark collection in Firefox doesn't really demand an elaborate tagging and classification system; on the other hand if I really got inspired and starting collecting millions and trillions (slight exaggeration there) of bookmarks I would definitely want a much more organised way to file and sort and access these multitudinous references. I shall definitely revisit Delicious and explore some more. It seems like a useful way to track down some themed tags and see what people have stored under different topics.

RSS - Really Something Special

After I set up my Google Page as my homepage earlier in the course, I started looking for a couple of RSS feeds to add to the page - it is such a terrific way to have a quick scan of the news when I don't have a leisurely amount of time to sift through a 'real' newspaper. I have now 4 RSS feeds on my page - The Age, The Australian, Google News and the RSS feed from the Centre for Public Christianity.

I wonder how long it will be before the big media companies start charging a subscription for these free feeds - surely it must reduce their income if people are gearing more towards these RSS options than buying a hard copy of the news.
I am sure that the Discovery Centre at our school will be actively looking at ways to use RSS feeds to access many articles on various topics. The potential for this is wonderful from an educational perspective!

SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

So I've been on Facebook now for about 2 years and had always heard about this other mysterious site called MySpace which, my teenage son convinced me, was only for cool teenagers (like himself...) and definitely for uncool parents like me. In addition it supposedly far more complicated than Facebook and probably a bit above digital immigrants like the Baby Boomer/Gen X'er like me.

Well thanks to the Week 6 tasks I am now not only signed up on MySpace - only to find it quite simple to navigate around - but have also discovered LinkedIn - more of a professionally oriented social networking site. It might be a good way to connect with Deputy Principals/ other Execs in schools elsewhere. The potential of these sites is exciting in allowing people to connect when previously this would have been virtually impossible.

FLICKR

How many high quality photos are there on Flickr? I started wandering through some of the Photo galleries and found that there was an amazing assortment of artistic and creative stills and videos reflecting a whole range of interests and panoramas. I'm not sure when I'll get to sort my hundreds (thousands) of digital images on my computer at home and upload some of them onto Flickr to share with others - sounds like a holiday project if you ask me :)