Gearing up for EVOnline 2007

Participating in Becoming a Webhead 06 was a pivotal event in my professional (and personal) life. Before BaW06 was even finished, I was already planning on signing up for it in '07 in order to explore all the neat tools I didn't get a chance to investigate in '06. (I meant to do this on my own, but--without that incredibly supportive community pushing me to do it, it did not happen.) Now 2007 is here and I am not only taking BaW07 (I officially signed up yesterday) --I am also co-moderating the week on Building an Online Presence. I am thrilled to be part of the BaW07 team and excited about the course itself.

I have also signed up for Blogging for Beginners (B4B)! This course is being moderated by my webhead friends Carla, Erika, Claudia, and Gladys (with Silvana as co-mod). Although I am not exactly a beginner at blogging, the course syllabus has several things I want to explore further (such as really understanding about RSS feeds!). There is another course targeting more advanced blogging tools, but I don't want to overload myself. Last year, BaW06 took up all the time I had to give it (and then some).

The courses don't start for two weeks, but I have already begun by visiting the wikis, Yahoo!Groups and blogs that each has set up, putting myself on the maps, leaving comments, etc. (Maybe I have too much time on my hands!)

Today, I also added a cbox to this blog. Wonder how I will know if anyone leaves me a message (other than checking it daily, yuck!)??

I also checked out Chinswing (http://www.chinswing.com/pages/default.aspx), a new site for spoken "conversations". It looks promising for both listening and speaking practice! I have not downloaded it because apparently in just a few weeks there will be a web-based version with nothing to download. :-) This computer is so full of stuff already....

On another note, our replacement printer arrived today. My HP printer, just a year old, has been acting very grouchy since the summer. I finally got HP to replace it! I must unpack the new one (I hope it works better than the one we have now!) and return the defective one.