Thing 10 - My final reflection
1: What did you learn?
▪ How did you put what you learned into action at school? Personally?
Throughout this course I learned about several new tools that I have and will definitely implement into both my classes and for personal life. The resources that each lesson included were very valuable, and I often shared them via my professional Twitter account (MCSDlibrary). Several times they were “favorited” by my principal and colleagues - reaffirming their value and timeliness.
I also included some of the Web 2.0 presentation tools into my classes. I’d been working with the 9th grade English teacher on an “Times 100 Influential People of 2014” project when I happened to have recently finished Thing 9. I decided to explore the advanced search feature of the Gale databases, and ended up doing a demo on them to the 9th grade classes with terrific results. During this same project I also implemented a completely “new to me” Web 2.0 presentation tool: Bunkr. I love how easy it is to import a huge variety of files and media types, and the student response was very favorable as well.
It was also fun to play with some of the tools I learned about with my own two children. I showed them some of the coding activities in Thing 11, had them participate in the “Hour of Code”, and my 7 year old is now working in Scratch writing his own games!
▪ Did you expand your Personal Learning Network? Make new professional connections?
I did exchange comments with a couple of other participants via our blogs, but found there was already so much to explore with the suggested activities that I did not spend a lot of time cultivating new professional connections.
▪ What challenges did you face during the workshop?
Finding the Cool Tools site was actually my biggest challenge - in order to find it I would always go back to my e-mail, search for an e-mail from Polly, and link to the Cool Tools site that way. Bookmarking it just never seemed to work for me, which is strange. Also managing my Blog was sometimes a challenge. I was never sure what format/link to use when recording a completed “thing”, so sometimes ended up with 2 activity logs posted I think (better to be safe than sorry).
▪ Were there projects that didn’t work out well for you?
My least favorite projects were the activities focused on curating tools. For some reason I could just not get into that topic area. I explored several of the suggested tools, and subscribed to a few them to give them a chance, but I find that when the daily/weekly summary alerts come to my e-mail, I tend to delete them without opening… just could not embrace them, although I do appreciate their value. Maybe some day!
▪ Other thoughts?
I thoroughly enjoyed this course and the pacing was perfect. Having a selection of activities to choose from made every “thing” engaging and interesting.
2: What’s next?
▪ Did you start some projects that you’ll be following up on this summer and next school year?
Although I did not start any long-term projects that will continue into the summer or next school year, I have certainly adopted some of the tools into my curriculum and will be using tools such as Bunkr with my classes for sure. I really enjoy exploring new presentation tools, and think it is a valuable area to share with colleagues to help them keep their curriculums fresh and also to assist them with incorporating technology into their course content.
▪ Are you planning to share what you’ve learned with others?
Yes, and I already have! I’ve been sharing, and will continue promoting for the next school year, many of the tools I came across during this course. I’ve been sharing via Twitter as well as word of mouth and through teacher collaborations.
▪ What other professional development projects will you be pursuing?
I hope to gain further knowledge of and insight into Google Docs and Google Classroom. My school district is adopting more and more Google apps, and each student will be issued a school gmail account next year.
▪ Other thoughts?
I hope to see Cool Tools offered against next year so I can complete the next set of activities and continue to learn even more in this same course style.
3: Did you like learning this way?
▪ For some of you, this might have been your first experience with this kind of independent, self-driven learning. Did this work for you? What did you most value about the program? What didn’t work well?
Yes, this is a perfect learning style for me. I love the flexibility to choose the activities most meaningful to me and my classes. I also enjoy the option of working on course content at my convenience - whether first thing in the morning or after my kids are in bed for the night. The only thing that I can come up with for what didn’t work well is the initial e-mails when some of the “Thing” assignments went to the wrong group of participants, causing some confusion. But that was quickly remedied, making this is a perfectly designed course for me!
▪ Would you do it again? Other thoughts?
Yes, I will definitely do it again, and hope it is offered again next year so I can do the next set of “things” and earn credit hours while I’m at it. Thank you so much for a successful course!
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