In beginning this course I felt like I had some good background in ICT skills. In reading Why School? I felt like I had heard much of what was articulated by Richardson and I felt good about creating a blog. Once I started really researching and establishing more PLNs, I felt like my head was swimming with all the new information and ideas I was accumulating.
In many of my blog posts I comment that I have explored the resource but there’s so much more that I need to look at more closely later! This is how I feel about this entire course, I have accumulated so many more ideas and contacts that I lost track of where I was getting the information! For example, I can’t remember who said they created a document to file all of their new resources and I commented that I should be doing that but I didn’t and I should have! In creating my final vision project, I looked back on my blog posts and I went back to the blogs from my group members to find the ideas that I thought I liked but it may not have been the most efficient tactic.
One of the biggest take-aways from this course will be the establishment of PLNs. The contacts I have made in this course I would like to maintain because I feel like everyone has great ideas; even if there are similar activities, it is good to get another TLs spin on it. I used many ideas from the new PLNs I am a part of in my final vision project.
Although I already had a Twitter account, I find I am using it more and have found a more specific purpose for it.
As well, I have joined a lot of Facebook groups where I am getting so many ideas! Pretty sure a member of my blog group gave me the first facebook group to join. These are groups I have joined so far and I saw one more suggestion today:
- The School Librarian’s Workshop
- Teachers teaching with tech
- Future Ready Librarians
In addition, I appreciate that one of the inquiry blogs focused on World Libraries and Global Literacy. I have really wanted to teach students how to make positive global impacts and connections so this was a good motivator for me.
In relation to my Final Vision Project, I seem to do this quite a lot but I have a problem getting these grandiose ideas, which are pretty stellar, but they take a lot of time and effort! I did it again with my idea of creating a Participatory Virtual Learning Commons as my final vision project! There were so many ideas and aspects I wanted to include that it was very time consuming but, as I said, this is one reason I had not done it already. I included quite a few of them but there are still more I want to include; this will definitely be a “live document”.
Ultimately, although I felt like I had a good base for my ICT skills, I feel like I’ve got so many more to explore, experiment with and share with staff and students. As I said in Reading Review A, “so many ideas, so little time”! I feel like I have even more now but that is great because as Teacher Librarians, I feel like we need to be ready with any resource at any time in any area, so the more the better!
References:
Needpix. (2020). Star Abstract Colorful Free Photo [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.needpix.com/photo/1120778/star-abstract-colorful-fireworks-rocket-banner-header-new-years-day-new-years-eve