Capstone+Essay+Patti+Brockman

Capstone Essay Patricia Brockmann

Capstone Essay - Pat Brockmann St. Scholastica Parish 4301 W Homosassa Trail Lecanto, FL 34429 __rbrockmann@tampabay.rr.com__

When I first received the brochure on the SITM 2011 (Summer Institute For Technology in Ministry 2011) I thought it sure sounded interesting. I liked that the orientation and first session took place live and that we would be able to meet all of the participants in SITM 2011. The next six modules would be webinars, which we could participate in from the comfort of our homes. So off I went and registered for the Summer Institute, hoping to learn at least one thing to bring back to the parish.

On my first day in class, I really enjoyed seeing other people who were really looking forward to learning all about technology that would be used in our classrooms and parishes. Sr. Caroline and Claudia, our instructors, made all of us want to learn more. If the upcoming webinars were anything like our first class ,we were certainly in for a wonderful journey.

Looking at all the information that we would be working with seemed a little bit overwhelming but I figured I’d take one step at a time and hopefully I would learn something. Looking back at all of the modules I never thought of all the endless possibilities for learning.

I really enjoyed learning about wikis and how to implement them into our Faith Formation classes. The teachers can use a wiki to post weekly assignments to compliment what the students learned on Sunday, and thereby have the parents and children connect together as a family spiritually. I learned that Facebook and Twitter were also good ways to connect with the families.

The Digital Storytelling webinar was by far my favorite. Putting together a story using Animoto was really a lot of fun. I can’t believe I actually received 68 hits with my story on Facebook.

Now that the classes have ended, I realize that even though some of the information seemed overwhelming to learn, give it a try and you might be pleasantly surprised that it really is not so difficult. I look forward to implementing some of the technologies that we learned in class into our parish programs. I have made a list of some more programs we would like to see in the parish, but first would like to make sure the ones we have started are running smoothly.

The Capstone project outlined the tasks that I wanted to complete in an easy format. Once one was completed it was on to the next.

I was also helped by all the class members and the ideas that they posted on the blog and Facebook. I would also like to thank Sr. Caroline and Claudia for their informative webinars and all their help along the way. They made it so interesting and made us want to learn more. I look forward to next summer’s workshop.