Is it the End or only the Beginning???

Day 365 - End of Chapter
From Luc Pigeault


This picture says it all about this course! Even though I am glad to be wrapping this course up, there were many times that I thought about just saying "enough is enough" and ask myself "what was the reason why I took this course????" However, since I am writing the last or wait, it could be just an end to one chapter and the beginning of a new chapter on my journey. Because if I look at my title, this blog is not a destination. If I am totally honest with myself, even though I found many of these "Things" challenging and wasn't quite sure I would be able to get through them. Not to mention being able to keep my sanity. But I did! Even though I had to use my favorite "life-line", I am very proud that I hung in there and I have learned so many new things. After all, we are our own worst critic, and I am a teeny little bit of a perfectionist.

I really enjoyed looking at Flickr and choosing pictures. I totally agree that a picture is worth a thousand words and that sometimes you don't need words, just a picture. I literally spent hours upon hours checking out the pictures and uploading them to my computer. I feel that this course has been a great challenge for me as a life-long learner. It makes me realize that even though I have been an educator for thirty years, there are still a lot of things that I haven't even begun to touch the surface learning about.

I would definitely recommend this course to my fellow coworkers and other teachers in the district. I would however caution them to make sure that they complete all the "things" listed each week in order to stay on track. Because of all the responsibilities that I have at Poteet and the little things that came up in my daily "life", I did not follow the weekly assignments. However, I come up with some of my best creative ideas under pressure. I would also definitely take another discovery program like this one if it was offered.

All of the ideas that I proposed how I could use each thing as a teacher, I carefully thought about and would hopefully use. Students are changing and we can't teach the same way that we did even two years ago. We have to constantly find ways to meet the needs of our students and not think that the students need to learn based on how we feel we need to teach them. As life-long learners, it is critical that we stay ahead of the game and be proactive when it comes to educating our students.

Right now I plan to keep up with my journey and not make the end of this class a destination, but to begin a new chapter to the journey. My other favorite things that I enjoyed in addition to Flickr, was creating my avitar, creating a slideshow with animoto, getting information from my google reader, and several others. At the moment, I think I am on "Thing Overload" and don't know which "Thing" I should comment or not comment on. This has been an incredible journey that has had detours, rest stops, and full speed ahead access. I have signed up to be a member of so many new sites and have put in a password so many times, that I wished I would have had a little notebook to write down the sites as well as the passwords. I would like to thank Mary Woodard for having patience with all of my questions and for her encouraging comments. You Rock Mary!







Until I begin the next chapter to my journey: