LOOKS LIKE WE MADE IT, BABY!!!!

http://rebelzen.com/2012/08/10-ways-to-be-the-most-annoyingly-happy-person-you-know/

Wow!  I cannot believe what a long, hard journey it has been.  We need to celebrate our accomplishments!!

https://dreamshadow59.wordpress.com/tag/how-to-become-a-happy-person/

I feel more comfortable with using technology in my own life, but I still have more work to do before I am as comfortable with using technology in the classroom.  I've learned how to use iPhoto, convert slides into digital photos, and iMovie to produce four iMovies (original, son's birthday, two for Christmas presents).  I am very pleased with the results and my family loves the iMovies.  
I'm able to gather information more easily from internet sources and to share that information with friends and peers.  I'm still active on Twitter and really enjoy learning from my educational twitter friends.  I feel more comfortable linking sites and embedding  content to share important content. 
I enjoyed learning how to use icons to link websites for my professional online library and professional print library.  I will use both of these libraries on my classroom website and plan to add more links.

My favorite assignment and cool tool is the ThingLink and I will use it with my students.  I want to make make more ThingLinks using real aloud/audio books and I started another one.  I was surprised that not every book I wanted to use had a read aloud version.  I am inspired to post my own read aloud books on youtube and I never thought I would post anything on youtube.  

Thanks to my second grade team and their use of Seesaw and Book Creator, I am using more technology in the classroom.  We are recording students explain their thinking about how to problem solve CGI (Cognitively Guided Instruction) math problems on a weekly basis.  The students love using Seesaw!  

I really enjoyed learning about the Cool Tools and hope to explore them on my own since we were not able to spend much time on them during class.  

The journey has been difficult, full of tears and plenty of frustration.  I've wanted to give up, but once I finally mastered the task then I felt so proud of myself.