Week 2 Tech Tools Experience

For a long time I have held out on Blogs. I have created several web sites or personal web pages, whatever you prefer to call them, and as I heard more and more buzz about blogs I still contentended that I was not a Blogger. Well, now I am a Blogger and I have to say I am enjoying it! This blog was easy as pie to sign up for, fairly easy to customize and super duper easy to add new content to. This is intriquing for me as a technology leader in my district, because I know that in general if it is not easy, teachers won't use it. So I will continue to evaluate the value of blogs in education as we progress this semester and I do believe that I will come to a revised conclusion about them.

RSS has been a part of my online learning and surfing for about 6 months now, and it has been a great tool for helping me find relevant resources. I subscribe to six EdTech blogs (see sidebar) and enjoy reaping the benefits of others with similiar interests and motivation who are very smart and take the time to share resources. I have always checked my feeds via the IE browser tab, but have to say that I am glad this class encouraged me to use Google Reader. I put a widget on my iGoogle homepage that has the feeds, and now am able to check a few daily a lot easier than before when I ended up checking dozens on more of a weekly basis-which was a bit overwhelming. RSS is a major facilitator of my Personal Learning Network and I am eager to integrate it into my Blogging and explore its possibilities more.

I have been intrigued with Wikis ever since attending the MACUL conference in March, but had yet to take the time to really get my hands dirty with one. So I am glad this class is providing the needed prod to get me going on a Wiki because I just love the collaborative aspect of them. They are clean and simple, and allow for integrating widgets which is something I look for on any site. Like I mentioned earlier, I considered myself a webpager.... but maybe now I will have also be a Wiki-er, too.