The joys of teaching...

All of you who know me know that I'm an educator at heart. Most of my professional life has been in education (and I consider Real Estate education as well - that is a large part of what we do as agents), and one of the reasons I wanted to start Cardani Group, REALTORS®.

For a little over a year now I've been teaching the Texas Real Estate Commission Legal Update and Ethics courses and the NAR Ethics course at the Austin Board of REALTORS®. I also taught a few Principles I and Principles II courses at the Champions School of Real Estate Austin campus. Every time I teach, I learn. Every time I teach, I meet new people. Every time I teach, I make new friends.

On Monday of this week I taught Technology 101 - An Overview at the Austin Board. This was a custom designed course written to help agents get a better understanding of the huge variety of technology options available to them. We had a great time exploring various hardware, software and services related to our profession, looked at ways they can assist us in our business, and considered some of the ethical implications of the technology.

As a special bonus, the participants received special discount codes for many of these services - including showing feedback, text response services and cell phone service. Two lucky people one free tech toys...the first a digital key chain and the second a free domain name.

At the end of the three hour course, it was clear that we were really just getting started and there was so much more we could cover. It could have easily been a 6 hour course. We will likely have the same experience in the 102 and 103 sessions. I can't wait for those, coming up in August and September.

Anyway, from being with my peers and the simple joy of being in a learning environment is always fantastic. And it's always a special bonus to check out the participant evaluations. Good stuff. Here's an excerpt from one participants evaluation. Always makes you feel good to hear this type of feedback!

Thank you to everyone who attended the class. It was absolutely my pleasure to share this information and to facilitate our learning. While 101 was an very intentionally an overview, 102 will be an in-depth exploration of social networking technologies, how they can be utilized in our business, how the Code of Ethics impacts our social networking activities, and how to create a plan that balances our regular networking activities with this new phenomena. I'm looking forward to seeing you again next month! Bring your friends!