My Very First Wiki!

          This week in TPTE 486, I successfully created my very first wiki! Before I made my wiki, I never even knew what exactly a wiki was. I have used wikipedia quite frequently, but I never knew you could create your very own wiki and collaborate with your classmates. The wiki took is actually quite interesting and I am glad that I am becoming more and more familiar with it. While we were making the wiki in class, I naturally had a million questions running through my head. "How do you log in to this?" "How do you upload a picture?""How did she just add those links to her wiki?"-These were just a few of the many questions that were racking my brain as I was creating my wiki.
         Part of my problem is (and it is not just in this class) that I get nervous when I look over at other students computers or look over at what they are doing and I see that they are on something different than me or are way ahead of me, and then I begin to ask my questions out loud without even trying it for myself. I feel as though I took a different approach to creating my wiki. This time I really tried to create the wiki independently by following the directions that Dr. Obannon was giving, while still asking basic questions here and there. This seemed to work because my wiki came out just fine, if I do say so myself! Although Dr. Obannon helped me choose an appropriate picture, I still successfully made my "all about me" wiki page all myself!
        I do have to admit that I did stay after class for quite some time with some other students and we all helped each other with questions we had. We were all stumped on posting links to our wiki page, but thankfully Dr. Obannon was there to assist us and explain to us step by step how to do it. I am happy that I stayed after class and asked the remaining questions I had because if I had gone home and tried to figure them out myself, I would have gotten stressed and at some point probably would have given up. It is very easy for me to get stressed early in the game because of my fear of  falling behind everyone. I have learned though that we all work at different paces, but it is comforting to know that all the students in the class can work together and answer each others questions. This makes me less nervous about using more technology because I know my classmates and Dr. Obannon are there to make it less confusing!

Intial feelings about becoming a blogger...

As I am sitting here writing my first blog EVER, I can honestly say that I never thought I would have to do one or would ever have use for one in my life. After learning about what the blog had to offer though, I realized that it is quite useful and actually quite interesting to have. Learning how to use this blog definitely contributes to me learning how to better use technology, which I am really excited about. I am somewhat nervous in learning how to use all this technology because I have never had to use this much technology in a class before. I think it is exciting and interesting how much more the teaching profession is migrating towards using all new kinds of  technology and I look forward to learning how to integrate technology into my own classroom in the future. I am thankful that I have this TPTE class to help me master all these new technology skills that I am going to be learning throughout the semester!