Thing 10: Final Reflection

1: What did you learn?

• How did you put what you learned into action at school? Personally?
• I would love to teach video book trailers using animoto and Imovie.  Start a Weebly for a book club blog. Use Stormboard and Symbaloo for group project brainstorming and source curation.  And personally, I would like to spend more time sharing photos with friends and family on Instagram.
• Did you expand your Personal Learning Network? Make new professional connections?
• Polly has been wonderful and the whole experience has made me feel more comfortable reaching out to her.  I would also like to spend more time working with Jen Cannell and Jane Bentley from Questar III in order to become more fluent in our databases and OverDrive services.  
• What challenges did you face during the workshop?
• Two challenges that I faced during this experience were the nature of learning online and the technology access within my district.  I have always learned best by working with people face to face in small groups.   This is the best way for me to acquire information.  However, I must learn to overcome and adapt to learning socially in groups online.   This has always been a challenge for me and I look forward to next year’s program as a way to become more comfortable with this way of learning.  
• The technology access within my district has also been a challenge.   We still do not have access to blogs or certain websites.  I did complete almost all of the things at home.  I am discouraged by this because I am not able to share this information as readily with students and staff.   While I look forward to changes and improvements, I found that it is still very important to build knowledge of technology tools in order to have the skills when access is made readily available.
• Were there projects that didn’t work out well for you?
• All of the projects seemed to work well.  I was inspired by the wide range of choices.  I was more resistant to RSS feeds and I think that spending time with people who like/know more about RSS feeds would be beneficial.
• Other thoughts?
• Unfortunately, we don’t have the best access at school so I had to do almost all of the work from home.   This will also make it harder to implement new tools with students and staff.

2: What’s next?

• Did you start some projects that you’ll be following up on this summer and next school year?
• One of the projects that I have started and will continue to work on over the summer are, improvements to our school library website and facebook page.  I would really like this to be an excellent source of information that is appealing to the eye and well organized.   Being in the high school setting, I get very few opportunities to interact with parents and community members.  Both the school library website and the library facebook page will help me to get the word out about our wonderful programs and activities.
• Are you planning to share what you’ve learned with others?
• Absolutely, I look forward to sharing this information with students visiting the library and with staff during Technology Wednesdays.  
• What other professional development projects will you be pursuing?
• I would love to continue next year with cool tools!!   Having gone through track 1 once, I am excited to go through and work on track 2 next year.  
• Other thoughts?
• I look forward to getting on the tech committee next year in order to help implement and improve technology in the district or at the very least be apart of the conversation.

3: Did you like learning this way?

• For some of you, this might have been your first experience with this kind of independent, self-driven learning. Did this work for you?
• I have taken several online classes and while I like the flexibility, I learn that much more from being face to face with other learners.   I am an extroverted person and I learn more from in person interactions that working through technology.  That being said I am really excited that I rose to the challenge and was able to finish all 10 things!!!!  This is a big accomplishment for me and I look forward to working on more webinars and online learning opportunities.    I liked the choice and variety that this program afforded me.   I did think that each thing had extremely valuable information that helped me to become a better librarian.
• I would like to try hard
• What did you most value about the program? What didn’t work well?
• The variety of choices to explore and the soft deadlines made it a lot easier to catch up and to explore all of the tools that I was curious about.
• Would you do it again?
• I absolutely plan to do the program again next year.   Track 2, here I come!
• Other thoughts?
• I think that this is a valuable program for every teacher and librarian.   The opportunity to gain 20 professional development hours for free is a fantastic way to incorporate technology into curriculum.  The more we work with and introduce students to technology tools,  the more prepare our students are to adapt into the college and career world.    This is a fantastic chance for librarians to become technology leaders in their district.   

Thank you so much for following my Blogger :) See you next year Cool Tools!

Thing 9: Databases and Search Tools

I love databases.  I think that the transition from large reference books to the technical skill of navigating databases has been a long time coming.  Working in a high school library, my students desperately need experience using databases and honing their search schools.  In order to become successful citizens prepare for college or career, students must have these skills.   I also feel that as librarians it is our job to share this vital information with the staff that we work with.   Not only do the students need to be comfortable using databases and search strategies, but teachers also need to grasp these techniques to search and evaluate information efficiently. 

I have spent a good amount of time using SIRS Issue Researcher with my students.   In order to have some variety, I decided to delve deeper into Opposing Viewpoints in Context.  A majority of the research that students complete at CHS is either based on the influence of an individual and contemporary issues.  Between SIRS Issues Researcher and Congressional Quarterly the students usually can find enough information, but there are a few subjects that were difficult to find such as welfare and animal abuse.  I was happy to find that Opposing Viewpoints had a wide range of subjects to browse.  I really like the news feed style search results based on a variety of resources and media types. The highlight and notes feature is fantastic for research and can show progress as students are working.  There is a helpful save feature that makes it easy to find and cite the sources you use.   In addition the dictionary function is nice to have when reading academic articles that might have advanced language.  I will definitely promote this to the English classes that visit the library as well as the Participation in Government class during their library project. 

I also can't wait to share 100+ Google Tricks for Teachers!  So many helpful tips!

Thing 8: Collaborating, Connecting, Sharing

I decided to try Stormboard because I love collaborative brainstorming!  Working together in a relaxed group setting can produce the most wonderful variety of ideas.  This tool is very user friendly and pleasing to the eye.  It was very easy to create a stormboard and the introductory tutorial on slideshare made getting started easy.  A help box opened up with a friendly message and it was nice to know I could chat with  I love the fun colored sticky and the range of template styles to choose from.  I could definitely suggest that students use this to fire off ideas with each other.   I appreciate that 5 students can collaborate on one stormboard.  The wide range of templates can be applied to any subject area.  I would like to use it for the wonder phase of research.   However, I am concerned however because on the website the educator's accounts will only be free until July.  I would really like to understand more about what will happen in the fall when I try to use this with students.  This does seem like a really useful tool with a ton of great features.  

Similarly, Popplet is another cool way to collaborate and share ideas. The layout and style is user friendly and fun.  I like the concept map feel and how easy it was to naturally build off a central idea.  I really like the full screen option.  I found that when the address and tool bar are hidden they are less of a distraction. I like that you can export the popplets as a PDF and insert it into a presentation.  Popplets are a fun way to gather information and present information in a clean organized way.  I am not sure how high school students may react to the layout.  I fear that they might think it looks to juvenile, but they will have to be the ones to let me know.  I certainly want to share it with them and see what they think. 

I also checked out the 15 best google drive add-ons for education!  So cool.  I currently have been using the BibMe add-on and I think it's fantastic!   Two of the new add-ons that I really like and want to use right away are Mindmeister and Gliffy for more intriguing visuals in presentations.  Thesaurus and Open Clip Art would be good add-ons for every student and staff member I work with.  I look forward to sharing all of them with the students and staff during Tech Wednesdays.