Here we are at final project time and in the space of three hours today, I have changed my mind three times about the platform on which I want to share my information about inquiry based teaching and learning. I originally wanted to create a forum on SharePoint because I wanted to share with my staff and my school district staff about inquiry based teaching and had hoped that creating a forum would create a support network for this style of teaching. SharePoint is our go to program for email, school calendar, messages and district sharing. I figured that perhaps since we all will be checking SharePoint all the time, this would be the logical place to house a forum so it doesn’t become just one more place to look.
Then I thought, one of my favourite things about being here in Vancouver is being able to network with all these teachers from different districts. Why would I limit my discussion to just my district? I want to know what others in the province think about this topic. Doni introduced me to Yammer and then I though, great, this is going to be my platform to link with other TL’s and teachers interested in Inquiry Based teaching and learning. But this forum is really just a blog type format and I can’t seem to organize my links, video’s thoughts and ideas in an aesthetically pleasing way that makes me happy.
Then I thought Weebley. I know that it is prettier than the SharePoint sites we have in our district. But this is yet another place to link to from my website as I can’t have it come up from my schools website and really, this is about making information accessible and is several steps really the most accessible way to share information. I don’t want it to become a “Where’s Waldo” hunt.
So now I have gone back to the Project Based Learning button on my school’s homepage. This is basically just one link and fundamentally useless but my Principal has put it on there. So then I asked myself, should I improve this link or should it’s home really be on the library website and this button on the main page could link to the library website. Thus providing more useful information about Inquiry Based teaching and learning as well as possibly drumming up more views and support of the library website. So as of right this minute, it think I will be adding and Inquiry section to the library website. I fear that I still won’t have the aesthetics that I desire due to the SharePoint website restriction that engulf the school website but I hope that I will be able to add the information is a useful and practical way…now off to give it a try.
This is just the kind of thoughtful deliberation that needs to take place when we consider how we are going to incorporate ICT into our professional educational practice. I appreciate that you have tracked your thought process here. I especially love the comment that a button was put on a website but it didn’t mean anything. We can always hope that someone will take an interest in the work we do : )