As an educational technology campus facilitator taking this class, I hoped to achieve more knowledge in the area of technology use within the school system. I was not very sure as to what guideline needed to be followed by the staff and I and I can honestly say I have learned a lot through the course of this class. I achieved success through this course and therefore walked away with resources, knowledge, and friends that can help me in the future with technology and for my job. Throughout this course we were asked to use several types of technology in order to produce our assignments and the instructions and resources were quite beneficial. I wanted to learn about new technologies to be used within the classroom and on campus and that is exactly what I got throughout this course. I learned about blogs, wikis, video conferencing, and many other applications and sites that were listed within our articles. I plan to keep all the articles for future reference.

    The achieved outcomes that were the end results of this course were using different types of technology in order to produce various types of assignments. I have never had the opportunity to work with blogs before and honestly did not know how until I took this course. With the professors' instructions and other people's help, I was able to produce my own blog and learn how to follow other blogs in order to leave comments. The work done within this course is still relevant to my job because my job consists of daily communication and collaboration. If I were able to convince the staff and administration to use blogs on my campus like some schools did within the articles, I believe they would be quite beneficial. We still do faculty meetings the old fashion way and it takes a lot of time and with blogs, those meetings would no longer be necessary. Also if I were able to teach the staff how to use video conferencing, which I already use for lessons as of this year, staff members could meet with anyone, anytime, and anyplace.

    As far as outcomes that I did not achieve, I would probably have to say I am still unsure as of how to use all the technology used within this class. Like I mentioned earlier, I had never used blogs up until this course. It was very difficult in one of the assignments we had in week for where we had to produce and action plan along with the organizational chart and post it to our blog. I have no experience with blogs; therefore I had to Google a lot of articles in order to find out how to post my organizational chart because the blog doesn't allow you to copy and paste. It took a lot of time, trial and error, and frustration. In the end I did achieve what I was trying to do and got my chart posted on my blog, but still am very unsure as of how I did it. Having no knowledge in areas of technology software or technology in general prevented me from being able to produce the type of assignments I wanted to and will still prevent me in the future from using the technology like I want to. I need someone to sit down with me and show me.

    I was successful in carrying out the course assignments because I am still very familiar with a lot of the basic programs and technology. When I start getting into areas of using collaborating programs, etc., that is where my expertise weakens. I was able to complete every weekly assignment with the help of instructions from our coach, professors, and fellow students. Having the ability to communicate and collaborate with others really helped with this course in producing the weekly assignments. The only drawback that discouraged my work was constantly questioning myself if I did the assignments correctly because I had no experience with the stuff we were asked to do. Luckily with help and following the rubric, I was able to complete all assignments.

    From this course I am taking the knowledge with me that there are other productive ways to communicate, produce information, and collaborate. There is also a whole world of information on how to keep our students and staff safe within the technological world. I learned about different sites that produce resources to keep children safe while on the Internet, resources for parents to use in order to keep their kids safe, and resources for educators to keep children safe. From this class, I also realized that I can do anything if I put my mind to it. My attitudes were still some of the same, I get stressed out and overwhelmed in tough situations where I am not too sure as what to expect or what is expected of me, but I still work well under pressure. I learned that with the right kind of research, time, effort, and patience I was able to learn all the technology that was used in this class and I should be able to do the same with my job. I was able to help my fellow classmates on the assignments when they didn't quite understand something and I do that daily with my job. I am a leader and work hard to make sure others achieve success as well. As a facilitator or any type of educator, being knowledgeable in different areas helps you to become successful as well as others. I need to work on keeping a positive attitude and tell myself that if I work hard enough I can achieve anything, which was evident with this course.

    As a facilitator for campus technology, I could really see using blogs with staff and students as a beneficial tool to communicate and collaborate. Blogs provide a great deal of educational value for 21^st century learners in the fact that most people are doing with the traditional paper and pencil. We as a society are communicating more with technology than ever was done before. Emails, blogs, video conferencing sites, etc. are being used as valuable forms of communication. Blogs allow for people to post ideas, videos, pictures, while others comment on the blogs. Blogs can keep up –to-date information posted by the author of the blog. I feel blogs would be beneficial for teachers to use with students so communication and collaboration could continue outside of the classroom. Also blogs could be used for staff members as a way of constant communication and feedback instead of weekly or monthly meetings like our staff have to take part of.

    As an educator, my concerns for blogs are maintaining the children's safety. In today's technological world, the Internet is an open door given to molesters and other hurtful people to gain access to children. When using blogs for education, it is hard to control safety of the children at all times. There are also has to be specific rules and procedures set in place on what can and can't be posted on blogs. Permission needs to be given from administration and parents in order to use blogs for educational purposes. I believe the safety and ethical behaviors of students and staff that uses the blogs is a major concern for using them in education.

    From the course of this class I have gained ideas on how to use blogs for communication purposes with school stakeholders. Blogs can be used to communicate anything from agendas, to school changes, and decisions made by staff members on campus. Blogs can be used within the classroom for students and teachers to communicate and continue discussions from daily lessons or about projects. I also feel blogs could be used to communicate ideas and actions being taken in class with parents. Parents could post comments on blogs and the teachers could respond immediately, especially when parents don't have time to meet with the teachers or call.

    Overall throughout the course of this class I have gained a lot of knowledge from this course and will hold on to the resources that were given to me from articles in the class for future reference. With all technology today there are good parts and bad parts to it. We as educators have to learn to overcome the bad and use technology to make education easier and more intriguing. Our educational system must learn to provide technology for students to be successful in the 21^st century. It is our job as educators to make sure we provide that technology and prepare our students for the future.