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!