moving beyond techie wannabe

My leap in technological learning started in pre-res, learning the Moodle system.  Our team worked within Wiggio collaboratively, and during this time I switched from PC to MAC for the first time so I was also learning a new operating system.  In the first few days of residency, I’ve added Google Doc, Google Presentation, Wiki Doc, Etherpad, Twitter, Word Bibliography manager, Firefox, WordPress, Refworks and Google Reader to my toolbox.  Most of these I’ve figured out on my own, and my cohorts have introduced or taught me about others.  I’ve seen some of the great benefits that technology can bring to learning (collaborative documents, synchronous discussion, etc) but I’m also beginning to realize some of the drawbacks as well (in addition to learning coursework, having to also learn a new technology – as well as frequent service disruptions).

I think I’m slowly moving from ‘techie-wannabe’ to ‘techie-beginner’.  While I’ll never catch up to those in my cohort that do IT as a living, I knew I had made great strides last night when I was able to show one of them something he didn’t know! (well, ok, it was an application on my mac and he was a PC user, but still….).  Guess what’s on my bedside table?  I didn’t even bring a novel, I brought MACworld magazine!

Last night I connected wirelessly  within the Grant building, and was working with my team when a Skype video call came in.  My 8 year old daughter was skyping and I carried my laptop around the hallways of Grant building during our video chat.  At one point in the conversation I flipped my computer around and showed her a peacock.  Then I came back into our hot sweaty meeting room and introduced her to my teammates – she waved and showed off the popsicle she was eating. I do love technology.