When my tech director signed me up for TATC, I was under the impression that it would be like one of the regular ESC offerings -- some meat, mostly fluff, and easy.

Needless to say, I was wrong.

TATC is the "Atkins Diet" of ESC offerings. These courses have been all meat! Looking back, I'm amazed at how much we've done, and how much I've learned in each of the areas. As a self-taught technology teacher and user, I'm used to having to figure things out for myself, and then learning a little here and there as things have come along. TATC has been, at times, the proverbial drink of water from a firehose.

Vision IT was more or less what I expected the entire course to be like, going in. We sampled a little of all the TATC courses, but the level of technical difficulty was about what I expected -- very low.

Standards I-V are basic classroom teacher stuff. The single most important aspect I've found in them is the demand for planning -- an area in which, uncomfortably, I have to admit that I'm not always up to par. But TATC doesn't give you the luxury of "winging it," and I've begun to develop better skills at planning out instruction and evaluation. I've also learned to deal with the occasional disaster -- like the lightning-strike caused death of my computer in the last three weeks of the course, and, naturally, the horrible sinking feeling when I've just realized I pushed the wrong button from time to time.

Standard VII was an old friend to me. I've spent several years working desktop publishing as a newspaper and magazine editor, but I learned a great deal during this course. Like many of the self-taught, I had most of the concepts and ideas, but the TATC course helped coalesce the overall picture and fill in the gaps. It also made me aware of the need to consider design principles in every piece of paper I produce, rather than just "dashing off" a note to parents.

Standard VIII (Digital Graphics and Animation) was just a huge amount of fun. In amongst the squares of my checkered past, I have also been a photographer, so I was comfortable with principles of composition and most of the technical aspects of photography, and was free to concentrate on having a good time with the assignments. I've been unleashed in Photoshop, and have had a great time manipulating and adjusting photographs. Animation was an area in which I had no experience before the courses, but turned out to be a favorite. Just learning to make images move around the screen and appear and disappear has been a real kick, and it has turned out to be a great way to communicate.

Standard IX (Multimedia) was another area that got my feet wet up to my neck. This was also another favorite course. Previously, the only thing approaching multimedia that I had experience in was putting an unedited, un-managed music track behind a Powerpoint presentation. Now, Powerpoint was pretty cool, but editing and adjusting soundtracks in CoolEdit, working with video and animation were so far beyond cool that it was unbelievable. I began pushing myself in this course, figuring since I had to learn some sort of video editing program I might as well learn the best, and introduced myself to Adobe Premiere. I was amazed at how much I could do, combining the different programs to create worthy multimedia products.

Standard X (Video Technology) kicked open another door to an exciting medium. After fiddling around with Premiere in Multimedia, here we were expected to actually begin to understand it! I was so anxious about this course that I actually started working on it beforehand, and spent many long nights (and countless bytes of storage space) on editing and re-editing. I also found that my camera work needed work -- apparently, still camera skills don't always translate well to motion pictures. Again, planning turned out to be hideously important. Although I feel I've only begun to scratch the surface here, I'm now comfortable enough with the process to look forward to the creation of videos.

Standard XI (Web Authoring) was possibly the course I looked most forward to. I had some knowledge here, again, but I learned huge amounts during the standard course and the elective. Planning kept cropping up its irritating little head, but now as I look back at websites I created previous to the courses, I shudder to think how much better they would have been had I known the importance of the planning process. Cross-platform compatibility was an issue that I was almost totally unaware of previously, but now it's a consideration every time I begin to create a webpage. Navigation was nearly always hit or miss in my earlier sites, but I daresay users can easily find their way around the sites I create now. While the workload in creating a website has increased, due to my new concentration on previously unnoticed details, the process has become a great deal more fun and satisfying.

Conclusion. These courses have increased my knowledge and understanding of the elements of technology tremendously, and have fired my enthusiasm for the subjects to the point where I'm anxiously looking forward to the beginning of school and those classes next year. I feel that I will be teaching skills to my students which they will both enjoy and see the value inherent in those skills. After 17 years of teaching, what more could a teacher ask?