Rocketing Into 2012

Photo on Flickr by Steve Jurvetson

The beginning of a year is always hectic for me because of EVO sessions. I usually sign up for too many and then I have to deal with the stress of trying to juggle between them. This year, however, I have a real challenge to face.

I was awarded a scholarship for the online course called Building Teaching Skills through Interactive Web, or Webskills as we call it. One of the requirements for this course was creating a new blog, so please welcome Natasa's Webskills Journey. If you want to follow me along this 10-week online adventure, please feel free to keep reading. I will post there at least once a week.

Elsewhere on the web, I enrolled in only two EVO sessions this year - Podcasting and Classdigitools. I was trying to convince myself that the wise thing this year would be to skip EVO sessions completely, but I just couldn't resist. I decided to do as much as I can in these sessions, go into the lurking mode if I have to and even (oh, horror) drop out completely if I am forced to.

I was also thinking of putting this blog on hold while I am busy updating the other one, but I just couldn't resist. This blog's fourth birthday is approaching fast and I'll try to be here then and afterwards... We'll see. I post so rarely that people will probably not even notice if I am absent for a while.

So now just a quick update:

Week 1 is usually all about introductions and in Classdigitools we were asked to use a web tool to introduce ourselves. One of the tools on offer was Animoto and you know how much I love that particular tool, so here is my introduction:

If I had a bit more time on my hands, I would develop this video into a full lesson plan, but I think you can see its potential even without my explanations.

In Podcasting we used Glogster to introduce ourselves. From what I understand we will use that same Glog to add a podcast later. Inspired by that I used an old Glog of mine and added the Animoto video:

I never thought about Glogster as a tool for creating a mini-portfolio, but it's an idea.

What is great about most web tools is that, once you master them, you can combine two or three into one and get something completely different. You can add a podcast to Animoto (as an "audio" from your own computer), you can add the Animoto to a Glog, you can add the Glog to... you name it. But if there is One Tool to Rule Them All, please let me know.