Reflecting on the Journey: Professional Application

The second goal that I had for this journey was, “To explore how I might integrate Web 2.0 applications into my current practice as an Art teacher and my future practice as a Teacher Librarian”

The greatest challenge for me in this area was lack of time with students. I work .3 or two mornings a week as a middle school Art Specialist. Because I am not a homeroom teacher, I do not have a computer lab time slot for my students; instead I have to beg, borrow and steal time. I did have a group of Grade 6 students make a Leonardo da Vinci avatar for the VCS Art Blog. And I did inspire the colleague with whom I share a room to try using Prezi and Glogster and my husband, also an art educator, to blog. My hope is that with more foresight and planning next year, I will be able to use Web 2.0 tools more with my students. For example, I would like to have my Grade 8 students present their artist biographies using Voki. I could see using Glogster next year with my Grade 7 students to illustrate the Elements & Principles of Design. I could also potentially see having the Grade 8 students create their own blogs as e-portfolios of their art work; an idea I inspired my husband to try with his senior Photography students. Finally, I could imagine having all my students create Voice Thread critiques of their work to share with parents at student lead conferences. I plan on including these ideas into my course outlines, when I revise them in April.

I definitely did find ways to use the Web 2.0 tools I explored to aid my own educational practice. Prior to this course I was not using any social book marking tools. Now I regularly use Diigo and Pinterest to record and comment on great resources I find to enhance my teaching. I love the Diigolet and Pin-it features, that I installed directly onto my dashboard, because they allow me to easily select and store both written and pictorial information. I now have 3 professional Pin Boards (Art to Remember, Favorite Reads, & Online Comic Creators) and even showed one during an interview last month! In terms of online presentation tools, I loved using Animoto as an alternate way to present my student’s art. This is a tool I will most definitely use again.  I plan to share the Art Animoto I created with the school community at the spring concert; currently it is posted on the VCS Art Blog. I also posted my Art Sytles Glog to my art blog and hope students use it as a means to access online resources about art. I plan to use this poster as a visual aid when teaching my art history unit next year. For now, these tools really enhance my blog.

In terms of my future practice as a TL, the knowledge I gained through this course will most definitely enhance my ability to the job well. Practically speaking, I have gained a host of tools that I could use. For example, setting up  library blog, using survey tools to conduct effective collection evaluations,  or considering how I could employ the use of tags  in the traditional cataloging system and expand it to include valid wed resources, creating a meaningful 24/7 virtual library space.  I plan to continue exploring Web 2.o tools because, as Richardson writes, “To teach these tools effectively educators must learn to use them effectively. “ (Richardson, 2010, p.154). The trick as a TL will be trying to stay on top of the trends, but I am confident that the excellent blogs and resources I subscribe to via my Google Reader will help me keep abreast of the latest developments. I also plan to attend two technology related workshops at the CTABC conference next year including one on Google Apps for Education. This journey was only the beginning!

Beyond practical skills, my understanding of what it means to read and write in a web based society has grown. I truly believe we need “…a more complex definition of what it means to be literate…” (Richardson, 2010, p.148). This broadened definition of course includes what it means to learn and teach in the Web 2.0 world. A few words echo in my head as patterns I have noticed in this regard:  connection, collaboration, conversation, creativity, contribution, production. Richardson explains that beyond teaching students to read and write well (of course taking in to account how this looks on-line) educators must teach students how to critically consume information, manage information, publish information, and network to find information (Richardson, 2010). This has major implication for the role of TL; as Ned Potter in The Time for Libraries is Now  writes, "We used to be the information vault, now we've become the launch pad.” This task excites me, as much as it daunts me. It excites me because I am passionate about education, about my students, about my own children, and see the potential the Web has to make “our classroom become as big as the world” (Kist, 2010, ix). I am daunted because I know I have so much to learn yet. What comforts me is the idea that as educators in this online world, “We can’t pretend to know everything any more, and we can’t be effective if we don’t tap into the work of others who are willing to contribute their ideas and content as well” (Richardson, 2010, p.155). I am a learner on this journey and I’m not alone!

Works Cited:

Copyright (c) <a href='http://www.123rf.com'>123RF Stock Photos</a>

Kist, W. (2010). The Socially Networked Classroom: Teaching in the New Media Age. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Potter, N. (2011). The Time for Libraries is Now [online slides]. Retrieved from SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/thewikiman/the-time-for-libraries-is-now

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts. and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.