I decided to skip ahead and read the chapter in our book on Folksonomies because I have found, both in my courses and in the action learning project I am doing, I want to share the information I have found with others. It is almost an urge, like I can't resist. The easiest way to share the neat information I've come across would be to share the website with others and let them explore on their own. I have downloaded what I need to set up a delicious account, which is a tool for social bookmarking, but I haven't actually set up my account and gotten started. I feel pretty behind with a lot of these technological advances because I have been out of the real-world loop. But I am eager to jump in. The tech person at the elementary school where I am doing my action learning project suggested setting up bookmarks on Delicious for the teachers to access. I have a lot of work to do. The concept of sharing learning experiences and sharing tags to information is very intriguing to me. The teacher in me cheers "Hooray!" for these new advancements which bring information closer through shared resources.

Yippee!

I received word today from the librarian at the elementary school where I will be doing my action learning project. She had sent out an email to let the staff know that she and I will be willing to gather resources for use with the smart board and we wanted to know if there were teachers in search of material on particular subjects. Within 5 minutes, teachers began responding, and I know of Pre-k, kindergarten, fourth grade, and fifth grade teachers who want to participate and receive help finding activities. I am SOOOOOOOO excited to help and get started. The librarian also spoke with the school technology person, who suggested we set up a delicious account and put bookmarks there for web resources so everyone who wanted to get access to what we find can benefit. At this point, I would like to help as many people as possible, but I don't want to just look up websites on particular topics and that's all. I want to make sure to find resources and ideas that will help the teachers branch out to different techniques of utilizing the smart board. One of my problems I need to attack head-on is to learn more about the smart board, myself. I think I will let my learning set know what's happening and see if they have any helpful tips. Some of them may have used smart boards before and may even have one in their classroom. I am energized by the prospect of helping the teachers find valuable and practical information and techniques. The librarian also seems excited about the prospect of helping out. This is going to be fun!

Another school, another project

Originally, I planned on doing both my class projects at the school where I used to work. It was familiar; I knew the players. But the more I looked into it, the more I realized that there was a huge need for help in the area of updating the collection in the media center (great for Dr. Nita's class) but not so much in the area of technology.

Meanwhile, I found, quite by accident, a need for help in the area of technology at the elementary school where my children attend. So, after much deliberation and after getting feedback from my learning set group via emails, I have decided to jump in with both feet at two schools. Where I will find the time, I am not sure, but that is why it is called a leap of faith. I know this is what I should do, so now I feel like I am so behind in working on my project for Dr. Rob. While everyone else has been formulating their project in their heads and getting started, I have been spinning my wheels. Today, the wheels stop spinning, getting me nowhere and now I am finally moving forward.

Last week, I spoke with the principal at the elementary school to get the go ahead to proceed. So I emailed the media coordinator and arranged to meet. The meeting was today and I came away from the brief meeting energized and ready to dig in. This school held a fund raising campaign this year to purchase smart boards for every classroom. They raised the money, and smart boards have been installed in most classrooms. Now the challenge is to provide more training and support for the classroom teachers so that the smart boards will be used to their potential as interactive tools.

The Media Coordinator had said that the school music teacher had approached her for help with using the new Smart Board to teach about the orchestra. So the media coordinator helped compile resources for the lesson and then helped to deliver the lesson by modeling and then letting the music teacher gradually assume the class. I was glad to see that this media coordinator's skills were being utilized by coordinating and delivering resource material and that her skills as a teacher were also being used.

She is planning to contact the teachers at the school to see if there are teachers who may have similar requests for help using the smart board to teach particular topics. The plan is to see what kind of need and interest are out there, then plan a unit of material to help the teachers get an idea of as many different ways the smart board may be used within a particular topic of study.

I am not sure exactly where this may lead in terms of format, but I can see some exciting possibilities. I want my project to be practical and I would like to help teachers find and see the different possibilities that are available with the technology. I know precious little about Smart Boards, so my work is cut out for me. The teachers already know more than I do about the technology, so I have some catching up to do and I have some research and planning to do. But first, I need to wait to hear about who needs help with what areas so I will have a starting point. I can hardly wait.

Perspectives

Today, I went back into Teleplace to make sure I had no loose ends on our case study project. I knew I had responded to 3 of the 4 groups' questions, saving our own group till last. Then I realized I hadn't read everyone's case study brief. I had read group 1 and my own group (4) but I hadn't read groups 3 or 2; I think this was partly due to the fact that not all the briefs were posted when the questions were. Anyway, I read through all the groups' briefs again and of course, a lot of our ideas and expressions were the same so there was a good bit of repetition from brief to brief. yada, yada, yada . . . then as I read group 2's brief, I realized that each group had similarities but generally the same perspective.
However, group 2's brief stood out to me because they took a decidedly more accusatory position; they were critical of the principal's actions a little more than the other groups. I don't say this to disagree with them at all; I find it interesting that each group took a slightly different angle of the problem and dealt with the problem with varying degrees of solutions. My own group only discussed what we felt were viable solutions, like we couldn't even entertain the absurd such as firing the staff members. We brainstormed solutions then somehow, we used all of them in one form or the other in our action plan. Overkill. We had the immediate meeting with the parties, then mediation, then follow-up with mentors. I don't know that all of it would be necessary. Anyway, all of this is hindsight. Groupwork was difficult to accomplish when we weren't meeting face to face. And it is all about compromise. The more people involved, the more compromises are made to produce a result.