Response to question about the class

This class opened a whole new world for me and I think it will take a while to digest all of the possibilities. Ten years ago I began surfing the net to get information, lesson plans and ideas on art education when I started teaching art. I joined a chat room-which quickly became a huge pain because I could not keep up with the dozens of messages per day, essentially about trivia. So for a long time I have used the web to gather information-but not interactively, except for e-mail to staff, parents, friends and family. But taking this class, while simultaneously going to the National Art Education Assn. convention and sitting in on workshops on Using Web 2.0 in the art room, reading Jason Ohler's article in Schoolarts and ording his book and other Tech books on line-all of which converged converged into one big "Eureka" moment has convinced me to press onward with this-read all the books, take another class when offered and continue "technology integration into the art classroom" as a teacher goal for the next few years. I still very much feel like a tourist in this "brave new world"; a bit confused, in need of good maps and guides, and overwhelmed by the alien culture and language I am experiencing-not unlike I felt in New Orleans-which is about as different from Fairbanks or North Pole as one can get! I do wish I had not been gone for a week-I felt really far behind. I also wish the class could have been longer or more lab time, but look forward to another class in the summer or fall and in the meantime will work with Leigh McDonald at school who has a much better understanding of all of this than I do.