Module 1

Hi my name is Cathy Hansell and I have been teaching Dance and Drama 2 days a week at Holy Spirit School North Ryde since 2003. In my beginning years I did casual teaching and other dancing work for the rest of the week. I have had varied teaching experiences across different schools. I am now working full time at Holy Spirit, still teaching Dance and Drama K-6 2.5 days a week and also across two Year 1 classes 2.5 days a week.

We are fortunate to have an executive team at our school who are aware of the impact that technology has and will continue to have on education. They have introduced Interactive Whiteboards and Data Projectors into most of our classrooms. Our ICT Co-ordinator is always introducing us to current Web tools like blogging (each grade was encouraged to create one last year) and motivating us to explore them......hence me and quite a few other teachers signing up to do do this Web 2.0 course!

I would rate myself as O.K. with computer technology but by no means a wizz. Before this course I had email, facebook, twitter and I have used Skype with my husband on his account. I have an i phone and a macbook and have gradually used some creative tools on it- garageband and i photo. I have heard about a lot of other Web 2.0 tools like wikis but had little idea as to what they are and how to use them.

I enjoyed setting up and personalising my igoogle page and found reading about our "Digital Footprints" quite interesting and concerning. I was then quite motivated to finally set up a more "professional" sounding email account with gmail than the hotmail one I have been using since I created it at 16 years old!... Reading about all of the tools available with Web 2.0 is exciting and daunting and I look forward to gradually learning more and applying it to both the classroom and my life.