A tag by any other name....

Uh oh. As I continue to read and explore, I have noticed that I have been using a different tag than everyone else....omited the s09 at the end. Does that mean that my digital footprint is altered? Is there no classroom trace of all my postings and digital exploration? Feeling sad.

Perhaps I really don't belong here...

I have been working diligently on my course work with minimal successes. While I was awaiting some online help, I decided to explore some of the sites I have joined. It was my PT ning. I have never had any responses to my post there and therefore decided to explore the ning further to see if I was using it incorrectly. What I find is that PT's in general do not seem to be in the 21st century. When I explored, I found at least 50 job opportunities but very little in the realm of professional sharing and absolutely nothing regarding Pediatric PT. I am jealous of all the educators who are involved in this course an can at least feel as if all of the readings and work apply to their professional work. I feel as if my professional work by nature remains in the 20th century. There are certainly some low tech technology that can be utilized in my practice, for example the wii or, if I had the equipment, some computerized exercise equipment (not something I could imagine ever happening). I am disappointed in the sites I have found thus far for PT professional sharing but will continue to search. My current searches have left me pondering if, by natue, PT is meant to stay in the 20th century. Hands on skills and palpation are integral to practice and are difficult to convey in a digital manner. Perhaps I am ahead of my peers by trying to embrace this digital sharing. After reading this weeks reading on citing resources, copyrighting, etc. and some of the implicit rights of educators for using materials, I wonder if it is the opposite for a PT. When I have a challenging situation with a student and am looking for my professional community to support me, I encounter other issues of privacy and hippa rights. If I were seeing a child with a low frequency issue/diagnosis and were to seek advice from my online professional community, I would be fearful of the transparency of my request and that it may be viewed, despite having a lack of specific identifying information, as a breech of confidentiality. I can think back to students I have had with rare diagnoses, such as progeria, werdnig-hoffman disease, Ehler-Danlos syndrome or a specific form of brain tumor. Could my digital footprint be too public for me to effectively utilize my peers in this way? Currently, when faced with this type of challenge, I use Bell's technology and phone my peers to create my professional advice network. It is hard to imagine feeling comfortable regarding being invisible and private and gathering more peers to do this in a digital format. Having hunted today, I am wondering if my medical peers feel the same way.

My wordle is in code. Animoto, too

title="Wordle: pt"> src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/1476797/pt"
alt="Wordle: pt"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">

I made a PT wordle but have been unsuccessful posting it on either my blog or my wiki....this is so hard! The same on the animoto I made...I will research uploading and downloading and hope that I make a connection. I keep creating things and leaving them in limbo...eek!

The yo yo is up again

I just came back from class today and again am feeling great about my accomplishments. I learned how to modify my wiki and am feeling confident that I can do it! I just have to hope that this confidence lasts for more than an hour. To add to my confidence boost, I spoke to my mother on the drive home and she told me that I am the talk of the condo now that I solved my father's computer problems. I am going to work on my wiki more now before I forget the new things I learned today!

my global experiences

The question was posed of how much value there was in a global education. 30 years ago when I had a brief (21 days) semester break without clinical affiliations, I took the opportunity to backpack in Europe...about a dozen cities, lots of night trains, days with only stale bread as food, etc. This brief time of seeing this small but different piece of the world through my limited and financially challenged lens was life altering and in some senses, more valuable than my four years of college. When my son had the opportunity to spend a semester abroad, I enthusiastically encouraged him to go for it. Although his college experience at King's College in London has paled in comparison to what he would have experienced had he stayed at BC for the semester, the growth he has experienced on weekends has been amazing. His travels have become progressively more challenging, going for weekends to Brussels and Amsterdam with friends, then to Spain for a week, again with friends and being able to speak the language. Last weekend he went alone to Paris where he did not speak the language at all and is ending his trip with a week traveling alone in Italy. It is hard to imagine any classroom experiences having as much of an impact as this travel and independence. He is becoming aware of how different the world is in these places and has an understanding of how this is merely the tip of the iceberg, as there are far more cultures which are vastly different from us than these large cities. As he becomes more and more responsible for himself, he is realizing that the politics of the world affect him personally, whether it was when he took the wrong train in France and got off in the middle of some type of riot with tanks and tear gas or realizing that if British Airways goes on strike, he could get stuck in Italy and not be able to make it back to London for his return to Boston. This type of real world learning was not something that had been happening at BC. In that traditional learning environment, he did what he always did, nose to the grindstone to complete tasks on time, not over extending and then making sure to have time to play basketball, fantasy football, attend sporting events, etc. When Kim Cofino spoke about the changing educational environment, it range true to me on the college level. Didn't my son learn more by his travels in London and around Europe than he did in the classes he was taking? How much of that travel could be incorporated into his courses and how much can the courses of the future utilize virtual travel? Can a person get a comprehensive and meaningful education out of online courses? Can some of the current expenses of a college education be mitigated by gaining a "Global Online Degree"?

oops

I forgot to tag my muse about my new skills and can't figure out how to edit...but in my book, it's ok to find another way...

A new look on the cup being half full

Time to celebrate my successes....in an inside out kind of way. I took this 21st century course because I was computer phobic and wanted to increase my competence in this area. Within the first month two computers had died on me, one even being sent back to the factory. I persevered and during the next go around, I better understood the importance of diigo and writing down my passwords and user name, not that I am perfect at that yet. So, when my reimaged computer crashed again about a week or two ago....after hours of trying to fix it with customer support where they gave up on a fix for me and convinced me it needed to be reimaged again (where I would lose all my data for a second time), I realized I had no choice but to comply. I called back to get guided in this scary task and was put onto terminal hold. While holding I decided to attack the problem myself and once they answered, they could help me further since I was already in as deep of a hole as possible. So I turned the computer on and off while tapping f12, 6's and whatever other tricks I had learned during the previous sessions. Eventually, I successfully reimaged the computer myself and then reset up outlook express and my printer. Probably easy tasks for computer natives but not me...I was beaming with pride. I did have to resort to my husband's assistance to get word back on, but all in all it was a huge success. I am ignoring that I cannot shut word right now without receiving a message error and I am sure I will have another breakdown when reimage number 3 is needed. I now know that I have to learn how to use a zip drive (is that what those little keychain things that save everything are called?) so that I don't lose everything that isn't on diigo for a third time! I will be prepared and not overwhelmed next time, as I am confident there will be a next time.
My other great success was in helping others with computer skills. My father got a new lap top about a month ago and despite hours of phone calls with the computer support line and verizon, was unsuccessful getting online. He asked for my help and I told him it was doubtful I would be successful because I tended to be computer poison, I would try. After about 1 1/2 hours of work, I had him online and happy.
My failures....I have tried to stay away from them. I have worked hard on my wiki...it still needs more. I took a break from computing during the few weeks of my own and my computer's illnesses and now am not sure if I can keep/catch up effectively enough to complete the tasks of this course.
I am trying very hard to focus upon my successes...they are huge. I am attacking computer problems that would previously cause me to speak disparagingly of the digital age and throw my hands up in the air. I am helping others with their problems. I even offered to figure out how to share work on one document digitally for peers. These are huge gains, perhaps not enough to succeed in this course, but they've taken me to a place where I did not envision I could be at this time.
Sometimes I feel as if I am in the process of dating 21st century skills. It is a love/hate relationship....and I am the fickle one. When things fail, I am ready to sever the relationship and when I succeed in a challenge, the sense of accomplishment is huge. I don't think it will ever be love, but we could become good friends if my partner (technology), could just become more reliable, as I would expect of any good friend!

skype skipping

There is one technology new to me which I have embraced and attempted to love. My son is in London for the semester and "skyping" is our means of communication. When it works, it is amazing...we are having a conversation, I am seeing him, getting a tour of his room, watching him eat biscuits. He sees the whole family in action, the beagle even sings to him. I may even get more of a conversation than if we were face to face. To his delight, I can't touch him and to ours, we can't smell him. BUT.....when it doesn't work the frustration is huge. We say hello, then he starts to break up, freezes or disconnects and we spend most of our time redialing and saying "Can you hear me?". I understand the wonders of what this instant communication can bring and am in awe when successful. The successes seem to be about 10% of the time, hence the frustration. It is an interesting dilemma. As I enter this era of technology, I am amazed by the possibilities it brings but find myself increasingly frustrated by how reliant we become on innovations that break down. "In the olden days" when I backpacked through Europe, my parents heard from me in the form of an occasional postcard. That was the extent of the expectation. Now I expect to have casual conversations with him on a regular basis and the biggest complication that I willingly accept is the time difference. How spoiled we become! I have just spent about 1/2 hour getting to talk to him for about 5 minutes. What a magical 5 minutes! What a frustrating 25. Despite the frustrations of the failures, I would have to say that the cup is half full when it comes to skype. We will be seeing him face to face (touching and smelling) in 6 days in London. I will be able to tell whether those dark shadows I see in his eyes are due to the quality of the camera/angle/lighting in his dorm room or if I should have brought chicken soup with me!

google me

I just googled myself and my footprint has certainly changed there. The first things on the listings were my nings and twitter. It's a little concerning to me since I signed up for so many things so casually. The PT ning that I posted has never had any responses yet it is the first thing someone sees when they google me. Can I throw these things away and if I do, will they disappear or they a forever part of who I am to the googlers?

can i still be president?

When I am away from the class and signing in and commenting on all these sites, I start to get nervous. This digital footprint that I am creating.....is it here forever or can I make it go away? Some day when I am a technological expert and earning millions because of my expertise (ha), will these comments come back to haunt me? Will I end up being quoted from someone who found some of my inane jabber and then blocked from advancement in some unknown area of my future life. I have certainly tried to impart that message to my children regarding facebook, and I wonder if some of these casual comments could somehow be dangerous.

who's out there?

I haven't figured out if I am using this blog to vent as in a journal or for some other purpose. I should have saved my wordles and tried to put them in here but as far as I can tell, once I closed down, they were gone forever.

running up the down escalator

I refuse to give up. For those of you who don't know how crazy I am, I am taking another course at the same time as this one. My most recent homework was about learning styles (abstract, random, concrete, etc) and for some strange reason I decided to challenge myself and use my new tech skills in my paper. Instead of writing about teaching strategies,I created wordles. They seem so simple but they disappear so easily. I must have retyped each one 6 times prior to succeeding. Ah, why not cut and paste from the report I just wrote, you might ask. Because my computers HATE me. My personal computer, the one that was just reimaged no longer allows me to use word. To the best of my knowledge, it no longer has any word processor, just one that I am now locked out of because I did not want the higher level (or more precisely, didn't want to spend increased $$$).That should involve a few hours of tech support to fix. Not on my calendar right now. My work computer did not work with wordle at all...probably too old. Then, I tried to be cute by making my puppy learners wordle be very random and beachball shaped like a beachball. wrong....perhaps a very flat one. Anyways, the end result for you elementary teachers, is similar to the projects you love where the parent did not complete the task and it is obvious that the child did it independently. The only problem is this child is 52....perhaps i should have had my child help me. so, although i enjoyed wordle, i also found it very frustrating. i couldn't shrink it, fix my typos, or dictate its shape. if i got carried away in trying to do this things, it disappeared completely. i did, however, enjoy playing with the pretty colors. i hope i didn't lose sight of the purpose of the assignment by getting excited to use one of my new tools functionally. i feel like i am running up the down escalator and the downward movement is faster than my upward.

can I do it right one day later?

OK....I am on my own now, can I find my blog? I am feeling confident on at least this spot and will be very disappointed if this ends up on the class blog instead. I left class yesterday feeling less confused about some areas and more confused on others. My hope is that as my bravery increases, I will also not give up and give nasty gestures to the computer as often. Last nite was an example of some increase in confidence. I needed to mail Dennis the address to this blog and when I went to my email, sending things out was grayed out. Instead of walking away, I calmly called first Lenovo, then comcast and was able to fix it without a single swear! Maybe at the end of this coure I will be able to do that without tech support. I am struggling on where to go with my project. I will continue to explore the items to see if there is a tool that seems like it would work for me and that I would be able to tackle.

A small success

I am feeling confident on my ability to post a new blog. I feel so far behind in this class but hopefully as I attack one piece at a time, I will gain confidence. I was even telling my husband how google reader would be useful for him. He has many financial blogs and sports blogs that he follows...will try to teach him. Isn't it true we remember 95% of what we teach?

3 strikes and I'm out

This is my third blog that I have created. I am really hoping that I succeed this time. I will use this space to chronicle my learning in 3c's as I continue to try hard to love and embrace technology. I am in week 4 and have had a series of challenges, including 2 dead computers, both after I have spent hours doing the research on that machine. My computer has come home from its vacation in Tennessee naked (I suppose referring to it as the hospital would be more appropriate) and now I am working on getting it back up and running. It is healthy now, just needs work (mcAfee, being introduced to my printer, etc.). Time to test this blog....