Laura Musatto's Reflection

The Technology course has absolutely been the most useful and informative course we have taken thus far in the ESL program (for me, anyway). I have a bit of technology anxiety....I am hesitant to get on facebook, I did not blog or use twitter, and now I feel like I understand these so much better. I have developed a functional comfort level with the programs as educational tools. In fact, I now have the beginnings of an art education blog, an art education twitter account, and a website that I plan on connecting to our school website.

My next goals are to incorporate more images into the website and get my blurbs translated into Spanish so that it is more friendly for our students and families. I will need to do this through our school secretary so it won't happen soon, but it is a goal for January.

U-46 has a new Fine Arts supervisor who would like us to get more up to date with our use of technology. She would like us all to create a website, and it feels really good have a head start on mine.

The one thing that is getting me perturbed is the new district social technology policy. As an art teacher, I have nearly 800 students, I am at two schools, one of which has me teaching from a cart. The idea of getting all of those kiddos to sign the new permission slip before posting any artwork is overwhelming. It is a major deterrant to putting up work online. It also doesn't feel necessary, since the work is anonymous, and there would be no way to link the art to any particular child. I hope the policy is amended soon.