Another new beginning

Here is my new blog resolution: to blog at least once a week about what is going on and about things I am reading and connections I am making. I feel like a lot of the time I get bogged down in the fact that there is always something that needs doing in this job and these "guilt bag" items are the things that I prioritise over everything else. For the remainder of this year I am going to try to make blogging a priority.
I am reconnecting with the education community digitally, at least this is my aim. I have just set up a twitter account and have added a whole lot of educational sites - let me know if there are good ones I should add.
Today I went to Ultranet training - I was quite excited because this is my first glimpse of what the ultranet can do since my old school was a trial school many years ago. I am pleasantly surprised by its functionality. Coming from a school using Google Apps (which I find intuitive and clever and functional) I was more than a little concerned that the Ultranet was going to be a cruel and dysfunctional joke of an online network that was miles behind what we are already using. I am pleased to say that this is not so. The ultranet appears to have much of the functionality of Google Apps, but what it lacks is the ease of navigation of Google Apps, and the high end functionality. We will certainly not be replacing everything we do with the Ultranet once it goes live, because the systems we have in place are suiting our needs perfectly and doing much of what the ultranet will, but I can see that for the majority of schools who do not have a system in place at all, it will be a revolution in the way that they do things and in the way that they communicate with each other and with students.
One of the things that I have loved the most about coming to this new school is the technology. Due to the fact that every student has a tablet computer, the sky is the limit in terms of what you can reasonably expect them to do in a class. I found that at my old school access to technology was limited and intermittent, and it made you reticent to do anything because it wouldn't work anyway (and I am one of the believers! imagine how the technophobes felt!) At this school, with the combined strength of tablets and google apps - we are doing everything! Curriculum online, groups set up for student communication, sites for student parliament, curriculum, student groups etc. Google docs created and shared in class, google forms used to survey students and collect data in real time for a variety of purposes.
When technology is working for you and not against you it is the most liberating feeling as an educator. I feel like everything I ever wanted to do in a classroom in terms of communication and collaboration is possible here and there are very few drawbacks.
So this is what the Ultranet Pd made me think about.
I am going to try to do some professional reading as well and post on here my thoughts. At the moment I am investigating starting my Masters next year too so stay tuned! I think that I really need to wake my brain up and start learning again in a variety of forums and that is what I'm going to try to do!