Day+2+Thoughts

I have had my moments of feeling overwhelmed as well. I have been at home with my babe and 'out of the loop' for a while, so I feel like the learning is steep for me at times. As I reflect, sit back and realize how much I have learned in short week and a half it gives me perspective and I can take a deep breathe. -Corinna

Still feeling a bit overwhelmed...I believe it is due to not being able to find things easily. But I am learning and that is the objective..to learn so that I can teach others or at least know who to ask when I do not have the answer!

I have not felt as overwhelmed yet as I do now. The technology part of this career is going to be the toughest part for me. I know I have a lot to learn. The topics in conversation sound like a different language. I know i need to sit and fiddle around with all these new programs, databases and ideas. It seems challenging to do this now with the readings and assignments and the processing. I am really looking forward to straighten some of these twists out over lots of coffee in the homeland.-Kelly

I am just rereading my notes from last night's readings and am having a delayed //aha!// moment. The more I read, the more I listen, and the more I do - the more I'm realizing that technology "is //not// a threat and it's //not// just one more thing to do. It's really one more [valuable] tool". (Sorry, can't remember which article I made that note about...). Last week I had no idea what a pathfinder, a wiki, or a Boolean were. I do now. Yay! Cheers, Elly

Today's look at websites and their validity was eye-opening to me. Especially the Martin Luther King site which was false information created by a white supremacy group. Since all people have access to these websites it has become even more important to me to teach children how to figure out the validity of a site. I liked the suggestion to triangulate information. Find two other sites and see if the information matches. Jen

I am still feeling a bit overwhelmed, but much better than I felt when I left yesterday. I really like learning the meanings behind technology terms I have heard in the past. I was thinking earlier, in our discussion downstairs, when Laura was mentioning about sort of being a hybrid (for lack of a better term) between a Digital Immigrant and a Digital Native. At times, learning new things about digital technology makes me feel like I am drowning at the time, but once I have time to digest and really grasp what I have be taught (and then to be able to yield a product), I feel pretty empowered. This is what I want for the teachers and students I work with...to go through the process of finding and using new information and then being able to use that information in a productive way. Joyce :o)

I found today's website and search conversation in the afternoon interesting and informative. I was vaguely familiar with the different aspects of it, such as phrasing, but it was a good reinforcer and made me interested in understanding that whole process better and why we search how we do. ~Sarah

I liked the articles that we read last night... and I liked spending time discussing them this morning. I am always amazed about the information that is available online. Crazy! I have attached a poster from K. Schrock that a lot of teachers use in our school with the 5W’s of website evaluation. Beth []

At one point today I had well over 20 tabs open. I have definitely gone down the rabbit hole and I feel a little like Alice, where I'm small and everything is big. Every article I read seems to lead to 2-3 more interesting and relevant articles. I want to read them all but I just don't have time! I think that is the perpetual struggle of teachers. We will never know it all, so we need to use what we know effectively and be open minded to learning and trying new things. What we can't do is wait until we are "experts" to show it to our kids because we will never be experts and the kids will, likely, always be one step ahead. Great conversations today! --Laura

Loved the morning session on the readings. The discussion was very informative. The afternoon was FULL of information and vocab. that I have yet to digest!! Ditto the anon quote above which I copied below. "Still feeling a bit overwhelmed...I believe it is due to not being able to find things easily. But I am learning and that is the objective..to learn so that I can teach others or at least know who to ask when I do not have the answer!" Margaret

I really enjoyed the conversation toady. All of these advance searching features are the bread and butter of our profession. If we can do it better than anyone else.. we are the experts! Another thing to think about is the idea of how and why the internet exists. I always show this movie to my middle school kids with spoken annotation. media type="youtube" key="O2wMVk10X0M" height="349" width="560"