What I did during (some of) my summer vacation

Developing 21st Century Skills was the name of the online course in which I participated this summer.  So...here's a few of the things we did:

(1) Used a wiki, (2) used an online graphic organizer with other online classmates, (3) made a blog, (4) commented on other peoples' blogs, (5) used Google Docs in an online, collaborative way, (6) made and published a digital story with narration, (7) made an example student project using iMovie software--a slide show with narration, (8) added personal digital pictures to Flickr, and (9) published to YouTube.

We did a number of other things, too, such as a lot of online commenting to other peoples' posts.  And we did a lot of online content reading. 



I think the most valuable learning that I can take from the class is the amount of exposure I received to these online tools in a relatively short period of time. Did I know about blogs and wikis before I took the class?  Yes.  Would I have started a blog without the motivation of the class assignment to do so?  Well, I hadn't made a blog until it was assigned so, no, I needed a "push".

Sharing classroom experiences, school policies, practices, and projects with others and hearing their comments was invaluable.  Some of my classmates were quite insightful and had some very profound statements that they made, completely outside of quoting classwork authors.  I took notes on some of those that were especially good.