April 19th

Attended class from home on Wimba. Had some technical issues in that I needed to reboot the computer at least four times before I could hear what was happening in the class. That was pretty frustrating. I thought I had done something wrong, but Don had the same problem a couple of times. I will keep my phone and the number handy when I use Wimba again. In this class, we looked at Google Docs, Jing and some other tools which were interesting. I have looked at these on-line but haven't produced a product.

I am going to post two websites for class in the cool sites part of the discussion page. The first is an organization that measures precipitation all over the country. You set up a rain gauge in your backyard and submit each day's precipitation. The site has lots of climate and weather information. It uses a community network to track local precipitation. You can record how much rain, snow, hail and sleet has fallen in a twenty four hour period. You can also look at rainfall in other locations and time periods. The site has some information on each states climate and topographical features. The link is: CoCoRahs



The other link is for believe it or not;  the CIA. It is a great source of information and facts for every country in the world. If you want to know what the chief religion of Cameroon, or the population of Taiwan, you can find it on this website. The site also has a kids page that has games and puzzles ( listed by grade levels ).
CIA World Factbook

April 13

This is a photo of my daughter's dog. He lives with my husband and me for now. I'm not sure I'll let my daughter have him back. He is an awesome guy. I thought he would be yippy and shaky but he has the best personality. He is the mayor of the neighborhood. All the other dogs are happy to see him and every kid on the block has to pet him. His name is Gizmo. He is a Shih Tzu-Maltese-Chihuahua mix.

April 12 Class

Tonight we discussed navigating Wimba and Blackboard. I attended virtually from home, trying to embrace the idea of using the tools we're learning. Wimba works very well. The biggest issue I had was trying to complete the Wimba and Blackboard worksheet.  I found out that I need to hone my skills.  We reviewed several tools, such as Tagxedo, Wordle, Jing, Poll Everywhere and Prezi.  I'm going to spend some time working with each of these.  They have great potential for education, training and even in a corporate setting.  As I work with these tools, I'll blog more about what I've discovered.

Giving Technology a Chance

This is my first blog post. I have to admit that I am somewhat overwhelmed. I find it difficult to work when I have to discover and learn everything about what I am doing when I could just type it up and send it out as an email or letter.  It actually took me a while to figure out where I write the blog! 
I am really looking forward to the class. Understanding and using technology is key to our future, whether as teachers or in any other aspect of our work, play and personal lives. I am going to go to class from home using Wimba. I have some trepidation doing this because whatever can go wrong will go wrong, but since this course is all about technology....