Thing 30: Final Reflections & What’s Next?
Even though my five lessons are done, I thought I would add a few comments here under the final reflection. I wish the year had allowed me to do all ten, but the five lessons I chose were great for me.
From the lessons I chose, I gained experience in working with Google communities which was good for me because we are pretty much a Google school. The ELA teachers are also very happy when I find other resources for them and share these in a way with which they are also getting better. On a side note, I have also begun some serious curation using Pearltrees which was a tool I looked briefly at last year and wanted to get back to. I have and am doing some resource gathering that I feel will benefit my teachers quite a bit.
I also have been using Evernote and its tools more and more to gather and store information I want to get back to later. I hope to make a few more infographics now that I have my first one done.
Lessons 23 ~ Makerspaces and 26 ~ Take the Lead are the two that I hope I will continue to work on the most. I need to get more students involved with the makerspace. I did ask them what they would like to do and learn. I got some good responses that I want to follow up on and that will take some planning and time. It will be one of my major goals for next year - get more kids into and using that space. Lesson 26, though, has given me several ideas for ways to promote the library to all my stakeholders, but especially to students and parents. I think I have lots I could be doing to reach out to my clients. Pleasantly, most ideas I have are not too time-consuming and are going to follow Heidi's short and simple rule.
Professionally, I have added several groups and people that I follow, either via FaceBook, Twitter, or Google +. I have "listened in" on a couple new Twitter chats and done a couple more of the edWebinars. I feel that I am keeping much more abreast of what is going on in this profession by simply reading and watching the social media of which I am a part. I also have worked hard to retweet and share items of interest to people who follow me. I am a die-hard edutopia fan!
My biggest challenge this year was finding the time to get my tasks accomplished. Often, like now, I found I had to work late into the evening to get my work finished.
I do love working this way ~ at my own pace and in my own time. I love the articles you collect for each lesson. Reading through your suggested readings in one of my favorite parts of Cool Tools. However, I am not the greatest at setting aside time, but I still like this set up anyway. :) I like that fact that at the beginning you list each lesson. That was how I decided to participate once again for the third time. The best thing is that I feel like I have truly added to my tool belt and am prepared to lead students and teachers to some of these tools with a feeling of knowing what I am doing.
All in all, this has once again proved very beneficial to me and to my library. Thank you so much for continuing to do this, Polly. It is so worthwhile!
