Des Moines

Today completed the first weekend of our class, and I left full of excitement and ideas. Then I went to a family party and "talked shop" with one of my relatives, who is an IT manager where I work. We talked eLearning, IT considerations, etc. I came home excited to do a little work before bed. I was unable to get into my computer. I don't know why. I am so frustrated with my computer. Is it so much to ask to have a computer that works? We spent a fair chunk of change on it two years ago, so it should not be falling apart yet. That is one downside to technology; it is only as effective as the tools and equipment you have to make it work. Thankfully my husband has a computer tha works, so I am able to do homework.

Today in our group reflection time, we talked more about the best practices and concerns with this course specifically and collaboration in general. As we were talking, one of our group members mentioned a collaborative effort she was involved with where numerous people were involved with putting on an event for 10,000 people. She said it was challenging, but effective. That led to a discussion of the ASTD web site redesign project. We talked about some of the challenges we have had with the design and the group started sharing ideas of what could be represented on the home page if we go with the town square idea. I got so many ideas and I now have a fairly concrete idea in my head. I need to call the designer to get these ideas on paper. The ideas that came out of that 10-15 minutes were incredible and I am pretty sure I wouldn't have come up with them on my own.

The biggest thing I took away from this weekend, aside from what I just mentioned, is a feeling of empowerment. There are applications available that make it possible to do just about anything I set my mind to do. I thought of several ways to use the technologies we used today. For example, I would like to start a blog for the students in a couple of my ongoing courses. I envision a place where I would summarize the chapter and allow the students to post questions to it, similar to a discussion forum. We haven't talked about those in class, but I am guessing that they are something like a wiki. I am looking forward to playing with this technology over the next couple months.