Thursday, June 12, 2008

Thing #1 - How I Want to Use This Experience

I want to expand on my blog-fu and pick up on a lot of ways to use Web 2.0 ideas/ideals in my teaching... if not with students, then in my relationship to other teachers and colleagues.

I've always considered myself a life-long learner. I am happiest when I'm interacting with people - or reading - and picking up new information. I LOVE taking courses (which is great for PFK requirements), and I really enjoy hanging out with smart people.

Upon viewing the 7 1/2 habits of life-long learners, I can pretty much say that teaching and mentoring others is my most natural habit. And I get paid for it as a teacher, yay! I love to share my enthusiasm for stuff. And, as a bonus, it helps me with learning, too, since the best way to learn something is to teach it (I've become very intimately knowledgeable about fractions this year)! I'm also extraordinarily habitually PLAYful - my puns and off-the-wall comments always crack up the people who're receptive.

The hardest for me, as with many people, is viewing problems as challenges. I can talk the talk on that one, and fake it for my students and colleagues, but as far as my gut instincts, problems are frequently excuses to give up, or reasons to gripe, or things that make me want to cry. I hope none of the 23 things becomes a problem - I'll try my best to conscientiously see them as challenges and not problems!

As far as setting up the blog, I'm pretty comfortable with it -- I've set up 3 blogs on Blogger already, 2 for personal use, and 1 for work use at my former job. The latter one didn't pan out very well. The other two I've been really lax on, since first-year teaching sucked up all my time over the past year. My feelings tended toward anticipation - I can't wait to see what we'll do next!

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