Final Post and Reflection

What a rewarding experience. This class was challenging, rewarding, and definitely mind-expanding. The availability of content, freely available on the Internet, is growing daily. Not only is this wealth of information valuable, and necessary, to stay abreast of 21st Century teaching and learning skills, but the information is extremely valuable on a personal level. Creating personal learning networks and communities, and participating in these conversations, is invaluable in meeting personal learning objectives.

This was the perfect learning community -- 13 library clerks with similar jobs and different levels of comfort with the material. We came together as a learning team to explore, practice, create, and apply the Web 2.0 tools. We learned to blog, documenting our journey, to reflect on our learning outcomes for each of the "23 Things". The blog was a perfect medium to learn, journal, question, and respond to each other and make this learning journey together. We regularly commented on each other's blogs to support, observe, and help each other along. This perhaps was the most valuable outcome of the course -- the opportunity to get to know all the other clerks, learn together, and create a final product that will be useful for all media clerks.

This is an amazing group of women; each job, although different at each school, has many similarities and we were able to capitalize on the expertise and routines of other clerks. We were able to discuss and discover new ways to apply our newly learned skills to use immediately in our personal jobs and with staff and students in the library. Everyone added their skills, ideas, and expertise to make the class a success.

Even though I prepared the class structure and delivered the content, it was an amazing experience for me. I learned much, not only about how to deliver a class such as this, but I also learned so much more about our topic areas. Learning to teach the content, observing teaching and learning styles, and applying the material in a real learning environment was extremely valuable.

I look forward to planning and participating in future Professional Study Team classes with this group of library media clerks again. This format is perfect for learning, sharing, and expanding our job skills. To all the participants...THANK YOU for this amazingly rich learning experience.

Thing #18, User-Generated Videos, Pt. 2

I always loved pop-up books when I was little; I always bought them for my kids when they were little; now, I may have to get this one for the library. So many fun videos...so little time.

How can you not love everything about YouTube -- in theory, anyway. It is a place to learn, associate, create, laugh, cry, and share with the world. As with anything, it is something that can be abused...some of our students will go where they shouldn't, watch videos on their phone under their desks or on the monitor while the teacher isn't looking, and misuse the medium. But the wealth of information that is accumulating on YouTube (TeacherTube and other video resources) is amazing. The opportunity to become a creator and contributor is amazing. As a learning tool, the user-generated video capabilities are exciting -- for lectures, study sessions, educational video, demonstrations, as well as commercial content from companies and media outlets. Freely available anytime and anywhere the learner chooses to access it... uh, well, almost.

YouTube is generally blocked, not only in our district, but in many school districts. Yes...there is objectionable, useless, silly content (just as in any media). I don't understand the overall rationale in blocking all content, without any consideration for use and learning. A few students view some silly videos and then the entire site, even the amazing, educational, useful content is lost for all. I can understand keeping the IP address blocked, but instructors should have the option to use a temporary override to view valuable content in their classroom.

Then...there is always the bandwidth issue -- a few hundred simultaneous users can bring the network to it's knees. We, as a district, have to find ways to utilize the vast amount of learning resources for our students and learning communities. Videos are just the tip of the iceberg -- user-generated content, collaborative projects and presentations, and other robust Internet applications will also be bandwidth hogs. We, as a district, have to find the solution to open up this new standard of educational delivery and instruction. What if the mill levy doesn't pass... will we continue to limit the opportunities available to our students? Ah, the perpetual questions...