Thing 23

Take a few moments to reflect on your journey. You've covered a lot of material over the past ten weeks. What does it all mean? What are your big "take aways" from this experience? How can you, as an instructional leader, inspire others to bring 21st Century learning to the next level in your school or district?


There is an overwhelming amount of information available to all of us via the internet.  Becoming educated in Web 2.0 is essential to bring some kind of order to the massive amounts of data.  Web 2.0 is about people learning, sharing, and collaborating.  It is about learning to use all the resources available in an efficient manner.


I almost need to separate my take aways into personal and professional categories.  I really enjoyed all of the experiences with the various tools.  I discovered many useful RSS feeds that I check daily.  I also subscribe to several podcasts that I listen to while walking the neighborhood.  I am now using delicious on a regular basis as it has brought my both my personal and professional bookmarking together and I am so glad I learned how to tag.  I am really looking forward bringing my blog and wiki together to create an interactive site with my staff.  I envision creating a web page where I can share all the cool sites I run across as well as embedding some podcasts and videos.  I want to encourage staff to be active in the wiki and create their own as well.  It all fits well into PLC philosophy we have established at our building.  The thing I can do to inspire my staff is to start living in Web 2.0 world and model for them the available tools.  I can start providing them the necessary PD and give them the time to play as well.  If I take some risks with them, I believe they will take risks in their classrooms.  It is essential if I ever want to observe 21st century teaching and learning in my building.