The truth is that my journey along the path of integrating ICT into my practice has been one of very mixed success. I can recognize that power of ICT in creating opportunities to share materials and communities that allow for opportunities that just weren’t there before but I also see limits.

I can see its impact on my teaching in my English classes. In my Literature 12 class (now Literary Studies 12), when discussing the Bayeux Tapestry (See the whole thing: VERY COOL! https://www.bayeuxmuseum.com/en/the-bayeux-tapestry/discover-the-bayeux-tapestry/) , I can now summon it up from on-line and project parts of it on my wall so that we can examine it while discussion the impact of William the Conqueror’s impact on England.

My Japanese classes are also well-supported by on-line resources and projects like exploring culture, history (Language warning but brilliant and hilarious history of Japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh5LY4Mz15o), geography or food are render far more easily than a pre-internet world would have ever allowed and the richness of possibility is growing.

I can also link my lessons to countless supporting documents and videos to help feed those students that are curious. I can organize discussions on Microsoft TEAMs (my district’s chosen platform).

All incredibly useful and fun.

My curiosity and confidence lessens, however, when the demands grow to keep up with the infinite array of platforms and resources available in the ICT world. I think it is not only fair but important to be realistic about what I can do and what I feel comfortable doing. At the end of the day, my main responsibility is to my classroom (currently) and my school library learning commons (in the future). It would be easy, I suspect, to become swept up in a vortex of on-line and digital materials and ignore your true purpose. I feel a deep need to return to the question, am I using ICT or is it using me? (Someone is making money every time you are on-line).

Now that that preamble is over, here are the things that I want to work on, in terms of ICT, in the near future.

1. Look at learning how to create an interface that would make our district resources more accessible. This is a straightforwardly practical desire of my part. Currently, our district provides many excellent resources (along with our public library) but getting to those materials is not intuitive in anyway. I suspect this will involve some level of webpage design but am still not sure. (The current page – not my work – is very humble in its ambitions: https://sctlibrary.wordpress.com/). Almost a metaphor for the whole internet, our district resources promise unbelievable access but getting there means wading through a lot of nonsense.

2. Develop an understanding of some of the main social media platforms to at least have a handle on how they work. This would mean building a list of the key ones students use (my list includes Facebook, Instagram and Twitter but all of these are already being abandoned by our students for newer tools. Discord and Tik Tok being a few newer ones) and making a plan for how to keep up with new ones. After that I would have to give some thought to whether any of these platforms have utility either in my work with students or for my own support.

3. Explore the blogosphere as well as more academic on-line resources for voices in this field that can help with inspiration and comradeship on this journey. This one takes time but I can already see the benefit of having a set of strong blogs to draw upon.

Beyond this, I am open to new ideas and suggestions as they come up but definitely feel the need to be clear to set limits around how much of my time will be spent immersed in an on-line world as part of my job.