Thing 23 Final Reflection

“Every acquisition of accommodation becomes material for assimilation, but assimilation always resists new accommodations.”
Jean Piaget quote


This journey has been a paradigm shift for me and, I believe, for everyone that has shared in this adventure. The path that has been forged will grow worn and familiar in time if we muster the courage to use the new tools we have learned as common as we use paper and pencil. It will not be easy unless we make it easier. I am a bit afraid, but must take a lesson from our fearless children who bask in technology as though they are part cyborg. What was it like again.. to be so…intrepid?

Fortunately, some “things” have become habit over the course of it all. Delicious is hands down the best way to access my educational bookmarks and, often, I use it as a search engine too. Youtube before seemed like a waste of time, but now I’m using it to supplement my professional learning as well as my lesson planning. Mrs. Sapielak and I have a classroom blog that we use for parent correspondence and the students can use it to answer questions in their Book Clubs. Our classroom, although not as tech savy as some we have witnessed during this venture, is now headed in that direction and we are all excited about it.

Thank you, 23 Things, for all your support and inspiration.

Thing 22

Creating a educational Wiki was fun. I decided to make a practical reflective Wiki that can be useful for students and teachers. It is called What Did I Learn Today? Students can reflect on lessons learned throughout the day and gain closure, while teachers can model the act of reflecting by posting comments with lessons they learned as a part of the classroom community.

Thing 21

Our school is interested in better collaboration to become a stronger PLC (Professional Learning Community). Wikis can be used as a tool to accomplish many of the tasks involved in this improvement. One obstacle mentioned so far has been "time". This obstacle could be minimized if each collaborative meeting could be conducted using a Wiki to complete a product(i.e. plan for improvement, etc.) at each person's convenience. Later, these products of collaboration on the Wiki could take the form of lesson plan sharing that includes uses of technology. Look at this great example of lesson tool sharing I found on the Examples of Educational Wikis Wiki called Vocabulary Web 2.0 There are so many ways the Wiki could be used it would be counterproductive not to use them.