What have I learned in this class?

Everything I've learned in this class has been very relevant to my personal life and to my job as a Library Media Specialist. I've eased my fear of tearing into a computer. Also, I've learned alot about some of the great features I'd love to have when I win the lottery and build my perfect computer. The most relevant portion of the class for me was learning more about viruses. I've gotten them before and have them cause me much frustration about losing files and spending time having to reformat my hard drive. I also loved watching the Nerds movies. That may sound kind of strange, but I really learned alot about the history of the computer. So much so, that I actually shared some of what I learned with my students! They, too, were interested. Also, the research I did on the wireless components of a computer was extremely interesting. When I came out of the dial-up age, I was fascinated on how my laptop can hop on a network wherever there is a hotspot. With all that said, this class was definitely a lot more work than I anticipated, however, the amount of knowledge I gained far outweighed the workload.

How to manage computers

Managing my computer at home is a lot like managing the computers in my library at school - I have to be constantly aware of what kids are doing on them. With viruses running rampant on the internet, kids never think a computer crash will happen to them. They never think there are viruses out there just waiting to invade their files, or that a power surge could cause them to lose their documents. I've learned the hard way how blocking the fan on the computer with a picture frame will cause the hard drive to overheat. I've also learned that not paying attention to my battery life on my laptop may cause me to lose my working document if I haven't saved it recently. Yes, I've had my share of hard knocks when it comes to computer management; I try to pass those lessons down to my kids and my students so that they don't have to suffer the frustration of losing files.

Is it important to understand hardware?

Understanding the components of computer hardware is essential in trying to troubleshoot problems. As I was dissecting a computer for the Under the Hood assignment, I learned alot about how certain components work and how they contribute to the computer running successfully. But, I am still very fuzzy on how so many of them work. When I look at the motherboard, I am completely lost as to what each little part does to make it work. There is still no way that I could repair a computer, but at least now I have a little better understanding to what the inside looks like.

What do I know about computers?

I know that I could never be a computer repairman (woman!). I can't even figure out how to take the cover off the CPU. I can barely get the cables hooked up in the right places. Software, programming, that's more up my alley. But, anything remotely related to computer hardware scares me. I'm really hoping this class helps me conquer those fears!

I touched my first computer in high school during my junior year in math class. There was only one available for student's to look at...we weren't really even allowed to touch it without the teacher present. None of the teachers or office staff had computers, everything was typed on a typewriter. All I really remember about the computer is that it was a beast...huge, heavy, not very attractive. I remember thinking that it would be a fad. That was over 30 years ago.

Later, I kind of taught myself how to program code at a huge insurance company. Later, I was involved in data security. I ended my career at that company as an investigator where I had created a huge database on the specs of all my cases. The first wordprocessing program I used was DisplayWrite, the first spreadsheet I used was Lotus. Are these two programs even around anymore? I learned all these skills on the job, so I guess the programming part came kind of easy to me.

Now, as a teacher, I have 3 computers at home and work at a district where there are well over 100 computers and not one typewriter in sight. I am still pretty fluent in learning software technologies, but I'm still stupid about hardware. I hope this class changes all that!

Session 2

Wow! I can't believe how much I've learned in this class in such a short time. Using the webcams is pretty cool. I'll be Skyping with a classroom in New Zealand next month; I just need to figure out how to get my whole class in the webcam view. My students have been correponding with this class for over a month learning how environments and culture affect their lives. It's been a great project, courtesy of www.epals.com. Using all this new technology to share documents over the web has given me another idea. Wouldn't it be awesome if I could get the New Zealand classroom to collaborate over Google Docs with my students? My students are paired up with individual students in New Zealand working on a final collaborative project. We were just going to email the projects back and forth, but after seeing how user-friendly Google Docs is, I think this would be the best avenue for the collaborative piece of the project.

On a different note, I like the idea of online storage; Box.net and DropBox are the two I am most interested in. They have similar features and both appear to be very user-friendly. Both have free accounts, which is great. Box.net offers 1 gb free space while DropBox has 2 gb free, so I'm thinking DropBox is what I will go with. Again, with my New Zealand project, we are going to be sending photos and videos to each other and I was worried about space issues. If I save these files on DropBox, I can allow the New Zealand teacher to share my folder on DropBox and won't have the space worries.

My first blog!

This is my first blog. I have to admit, I was very intimidated to start one. I've been tempted to write one, but I always wondered who would care to read about my daily rantings? Strangely, it somehow feels liberating to put my thoughts out onto the world wide web. Anyway...enough philosophical ramblings.


To be truthful, as the minutes ticked by during class the other night, a feeling of uneasiness slowly crept over me. I'm not sure if it's the anxiety of starting a new journey with my master's degree, the anticipation of increasing my daily workload with homework, or just the good ole' fear of failure. It's the same feeling I had when I walked into a college classroom for the very first time at age 33 and looked around to see if I was the oldest student in the room! I'm not sure why I'm so agitated about this...learning new technologies has always come easily to me. I'm sure all will be good once I get into the homework routine again.


Anyway, back to class. First, a little backstory...This past year my school district has been part of a consortium, along with 6 other districts, who received a $75,000 ISSAC grant to be used to introduce new technologies into our classrooms, as well as integrating 21st Century skills into our curriculum. Our consortium received another $115,000 grant for the 2010-11 school year. It has been through the workshops and participation in this consortium that has allowed me to learn about many of the Web tools we discussed in class Wed. night. As part of the steering committee, I made edits to the grant on Google Docs. We also use Delicious to bookmark any websites that we come across and share with the rest of the committee members. As you can guess, blogging is new to me. But I've been interested in trying it out with my students by using it as a communication tool to share book reviews on new fiction books. This is my 2nd year as the LMS at my school. While it is considered a K-12 library, students did not use the library past 5th grade. There was only 1 bookcase dedicated to young adult fiction with three shelves filled with Loius La'mour, Agatha Cristi and Stephen King. I have brought more than 200 new YA titles into the collection and revived a middle and high school reading interest. Kids are so excited to read now that they want to share their ideas and thoughts about these new books. I want to start a bookclub with them in the fall; I think including a blog as an extension of the bookclub would create a great resource for their ideas.

As for internet browsers, I'm an IE fan. I've used Firefox when IE was down, but only when forced to use it. I'm excited to research all the different browsers out there. One aspect that I totally love about this program is that the homework will enable me to explore all the new technologies that I have always wanted to try, but never had enough time to. Learning these new tools has been promoted to a need rather than a want.

I'm excited to be a part of this esteemed group. I look forward to all that we will learn from each other!