From+My+Heart

I **__Cannot__** believe I am finished with my wiki.... for now!

I had to take a couple of days to regroup and consider the experience of doing this project. I am so proud of the work I have done here. I am excited to share this wiki with my friends and colleagues. I learned that I need to be realistic in my expectations of myself. It is not ok to bite off more than you can chew! I learned that life happens and ultimately I need to ensure I am taking care of myself. I learned a variety of new technologies and I love Web 2.0 tools. For example, though I never finished getting a blabber up here, I taught a teacher in my school to do it and she is using it with third grade students. I love the opportunities technologies present to educators because using technology makes learning authentic to our students. Technology is the only way many teachers will have to expose their students to the wider world; we can't afford to take all our students to the rainforest, Rome, or any other exotic locale. I am most proud of my photo story. I have stories I need to tell and photo stories are a great avenue for me. I am an oral storyteller. I love the way the words feel in my mouth, the way they spill off my tongue, and power contained within them. Fortunately for me, next time begins now. Once I realized how far in over my head I was this semester, I made a concious decision to turn this wiki into something I could use now. I ditched the idea of doing research and building a product and decided to use some ideas from a unit plan I developed a couple of years ago to build a useable product. I would like to include a page for teachers that shares Dr.Stocker's web 2.0 tools list with teachers. I'd like to include this in a wiki so teachers could attach lesson plans and examples to the annotated links. I would like to be a bigger advocate of the use of technology in my school because I more fully understand the implications of technology on student achievement. If nothing else, technology motivates!