What did I do to accomplish my goals today? How might I approach the next class to more fully accomplish this?

Today in class I realized that I shouldn't be so scared of online documentation and the software/language I'll be expected to learn and use. I admit I wasn't really listening very well to instructions; however, I was learning at my own pace by playing around with HTML and Dreamweaver features. I will say that, in the opinion of an online newbie, it felt like we were moving too quickly during class. It's one thing to hear a set of instuctions and follow--for me, I want to know what it is I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and how it works.

Anyway, I think I accomplished conquering my fear of Dreamweaver. With the combination of boot camp during class, the reference portions of O'Reilly's book, and a bit of experimentation on my own, I feel confident that I will be able to master whatever skills necessary to complete work for the class. What still scares me is the idea that understanding and implementing web design won't happen over night; thus, I'm nervous that my time between teaching, conferencing, and my other classes won't be enough time to be working on class projects.

I remember from taking online documentation during my undergrad years, that it always took me twice as long to do a task than everyone else. Like I said, I spend so much time trying to get a hold of the logic of what I'm doing, that I waste time in the actual "getting it done" part. For future classes and the remainder of the semester, I'll have to be careful about planning time to work on things and I'll have to set aside some time for me to just play around with Dreamweaver. Hopefully, when we get through our boot camp sessions, I'll have an extremely clear idea of what needs to be done.