I have quite literally just realized that the “product” I have produced for my final project is the collection of resources, websites, videos, infographics, and otherwise, that I have collected and organized about intellectual property on pearltrees.  This project represents both where I am in my inquiry process and where I want to go in my teaching practice.  In line with that, I have also continued to explore last week’s inquiry topic: social media. Pearltrees is described as a “collaborative curation tool“, a “collaborative library“, and a “social bookmarking service“.  Which is to say that it is a form of social media, and by using it, linking it to my blog, and actively seeking to share my creation and receive constructive feedback, I am making use of social media and exploring the possibilities and pitfalls of this platform.  This experience has only intensified my desire to create opportunities for my students to not only learn meaningfully but to actively collaborate, and in doing so, share the journey and the findings with their classmates as learning partners rather than just seatmates, passengers on the way to a final exam.

As it stands, I do not have my own class for September.  But, by exploring the social possibilities of various different social platforms (pearltrees, wordpress, twitter, etc.), I am preparing and educating myself to push past the walls of my future physical classroom/school library media centre and both connect with my students and support them in their efforts to connect to one another.  And, so, my final project will also encompass real time learning possibilities for the classroom.  I want to synthesize what I have learned, what has inspired me, and what I hope to accomplish into a unit outline, a basic plan, for how I could practically share my intellectual property inquiry – questions, conundrums, warts and all – with my future students, whether in the English Language Arts classroom or as a MEANINGFUL part of my future school library program.  Where to begin? If this last three weeks has taught me anything, I need to start with the “Why?”.  Here I go.