Final Exam

I feel very proud of myself for completing the Pi2.0 class. When I first heard about the class a couple of years ago, I dismissed it as something beyond me. I also knew I could not do the class during school. I am too busy with my class to spend hours exploring the internet. However, this summer was the perfect time to do this.

I really enjoyed my time working on the class. I spent a couple of hours every week doing the tasks. I felt good finishing the work. Checking off the tasks was satisfying. It was great to learn so much in the summer. I think I learned as much as if I had gone to a workshop. I actually will use a lot of what I learned.

My life has changed with the addition of this technology: I check my googlereader every few days and read articles and listen to podcasts. When I found readwritethink this week, I signed up for the RSS feed. Before this summer, I didn't know what RSS was. I set up our class wiki. I have several links and pages ready for fall. I had tried in the past to blog, but I didn't stick with it. Having to blog about each task was a good exercise. I have learned how to attach and embed photos easily. Now I always send photos to friends and embed them to perk up my blog. I am using delicious to organize my bookmarks. I think it will be useful once I have lots of sites tagged. I really like the technology I've adopted.

The down side of technology is that it is overwhelming. I tried lots of sites that were listed on the syllabus, but they had too much information. I don't care about what strangers are reading. If I don't know the people, I don't value their opinions or their choices. I do value sites found by teachers at Paideia. I think this course does a good job pushing us to look at lots of sites, but cleaning off and omitting some of it after you've tried it is also important.

There was no real down side to this class. I could not do this during the school year, so I think you should encourage teachers to do this in the summer. Amy has been a huge help to me. Brandon and Tami also assisted me at times. Being able to come in and ask for help during the class was important. I got stuck a few times and spent a crazy amount of time trying to do something small like make a photo fit a space. So one tip would be to encourage teachers to come in. Maybe you should have a beginning class and one day to come to school for help.

This has been a lot of fun. I know I will use the technology I noted above. Thank you for all the help.
Martha