Wow, I made it to Thing 23! This took more time than I expected it to (I started on June 23rd and now it is October 18th), but it was worth it. This program really encouraged me to expand my boundaries and look at some new tools. As I wrote in my lifelong learning plan, it is difficult to give myself permission to just play. I generally try to plan what I might do with my students or to help support the teachers at school before I try out anything new. The 23 Things forced me to try things without the end in mind. Now that I have had a chance to play, a few of the things are making their way into my work day. I now:
- use Google Docs to bring my lesson plan to and from school, and to create the minutes of committee meetings jointly
- have a blog for the library, complete with images, links and audio (created on Audacity).
- am working on a lesson plan with a teacher to have student do podcasts
- edited a wiki for our district tech in-service
- have better searching skill for copyright-free images for my own work and for student work.
- have more places to get ideas for library best practice and tech savvy lessons.
- feel a little more confident in speaking about Web 2.0 tools.
On a personal note, I have become more curious about RSS news and entertainment gossip, and I swap book suggestions with my fellow librarian sister-in-law in Nashville via Shelfari. I made a cool avatar on Yahoo avatars, and so did my 8 year old. On the downside, the Myspace account lead me to an evil virus, I have too many accounts and I get a lot more spam on my email than I did before.
This was less social than I thought it would be. I hoped that I might feel more connected with my colleagues, and share ideas. There were only a few people I could actually identify by perusing their blogs. Anonymity is not all it it cracked up to be. I imagined that people might comment more on my blog. That said, I did get a comment from a library science student in Georgia. Web 2.0 is different than listserves or DOL Materials Review Sessions as a network tool. You have even less control over the membership of the virtual community than with other kinds of communities.
The 23 Things is a great concept. I would like to see a similar program for K-12 educators. I plan to mention this program to our district technology coordinator as an example of continuing education in technology tools. I enjoy watching other people do cool things at conferences, and an hour-long workshop after school can be fun, but this program had both a great variety of tools, and the self-set pace to explore them. I didn’t even have to pay for much daycare! I would definately do something like this again.
Thank you, Mara!
Posted by aryk23 
