The SETDA online course I'm enrolled in now followed one I completed previously. I recognized a few of the names from the roster as former colleagues in the last course. I made some new friends online and read, used, and shared information from the course assignments with my work team members. The California budget kept me from participating as fully as I would have liked because I was tasked with providing compelling reasons why positions shouldn't be cut- which took hours and hours of time.
Since the organization I work for does not allow reading or posting on blogs or wikis using company computers, most of the course assignments had to be completed after work using my own computer at home. It was a somewhat frustrating experience for me because I really wanted to be able to use some of the Web 2.0 tools to help connect and communicate with the middle grades educators in this state. I spent a lot of time talking with our IT department, trying to get sites unblocked so I could access course resources. Each site that was blocked required a separate phone call and follow up email, a justification as to why I needed to access that particular site, and my signature acknowledging that the site would only be unblocked for a limited amount of time and that I didn't plan to do anything subversive with the information found on the site. *sigh
I do believe that Web 2.0 tools are of great benefit in education. I was happily surprised to learn today that my department is contemplating developing online content to be posted on iTunes University. It helps to know that other states are experiencing non-assistance from their IT departments, too. We can't give up!
