530 Week 1

OK, so I had subscribed to a Free Technology for Teachers news feed and saw how Glogster was creating an education friendly version that was ad free. Yeah, I never heard of Glogster before...but, wow, the heck with scrapbooking. This is way cool...and easy. Normally a new toy will use up quite a bit of my free time as I try to tackle every nook and cranny of the software, but with Glogster (I keep wanting to call it Globster...good thing I'm writing and not talking...mmm...I love Globstoppers...) I had a nifty new front page to my class wiki I hope to use AND a cute family poster to share on my facebook in a about an hour. Not too bad for a first time user.
The real bonus here is that Glogster would makes an excellent presentation tool in and of itself. It is also subject to many of the bad presentation issues. For instance, I think I used too many visuals on my family poster. But, hey, what the heck, I had fun making it. Me, myself, and I all agree that it's OK.
This storytelling business is really not my cup of tea. I struggled through the first couple of chapters in DigiTales due to the overwhelming number of warm fuzzies. Chapter 3 was much more palatable due to it's more practical nature. I will admit that I seriously contemplated borrowing someone else's future scenario to post (giving due credit, of course). That is until I came upon the 'Jimeny Cricket' (an appeal to my conscience for those of you who are not recalling Pinocchio) with a presentation on the purpose of imagining future scenarios. I guess going through this process helps one work through mental blocks and helps one get in touch with unthinkable possibilities. Yadda Yadda. Well, it worked. I made myself get started and clarified a picture of what I hope my class to be like this fall. It made me anticipate some issues I might have with my 'big ideas', too. This is something I have a tendency to lose in all the excitement.
I hope these types of assignments are limited, though. They are 'painful learning experiences'. Not my comfort zone. Ultimately, I would like to become more efficient in sharing my presentations. I know we have done this before, but I still feel a bit wishy washy about it all and would like to feel like a well-oiled machine. In addition, I would like to learn where I can share interactive slide presentations as most of the glory of the presentation seems to be lost with all the slide sharing tools I know of creating my presentations into slide shows. TTFN (ta ta for now...it's a Tigger thing).