Final Reflection
Last night we presented our final projects where we took existing lessons and enhanced them using technology. In my case, I evaluated processes and procedures within my workplace and determined ways to use technology to enhance our professional learning community.
While my workplaced has evolved quite a bit over the years, our organization has continued to fall back on old habits of communication, including over-use of email and print resources. Through my coursework I've been introduced to a variety of online tools that could be introduced to my staff to improve lines of communication and cut down on the amount of paper used to support new processes & procedures. One of the most valuable tools I learned about was Google Sites because it provided me with a location to store documentation, as well as facilitate communication (via an annoncement page and calendar, and collaboration through discussion boards).
The site has been live for about one month now, and the feedback I have received has been really positive. Overall, my staff members are finding it to be a valuable resource where they can obtain documents in one central location. People are beginning to participate in the discussion boards: Educational Resources and Mimio Lessons. For the most part, several have posted lessons and links to sites / articles they think might be of interest--the next step is to get others to reply to the posts in order to get more of a conversation going in regards to those initial posts. I talked to the staff about it yesterday during our staff meeting--we looked at the site and I had some teachers come up to share their posts. We talked about what we liked about the sites, what might not be as useful, etc. and I then demonstrated how that discussion could continue outside of our monthly meeting times by replying on the discussion boards. It's new, and it's only been up for a few weeks, so I realize it will take some time to reach it's full potential; but I'm very pleased with the results thus far and feel that I am well on my way of meeting my objectives.
This course helped me to consider learning strategies through the process of creating the company Intranet in Google Sites. I was able to see that although I am not teaching in a classroom, many of the learning strategies used by classroom teachers apply to the professional development I conduct for my staff. I took the learning strategies into consideration as I evaluated the site I created, and proceeded to add or tweak what was already there to meet my objectives of improving communication and fostering a professional learning community.
I like your use of the discussion boards. Remember though that we have talked about how actual interaction is also important for learning. It might be a good idea to set up a regular meeting just to discuss the highlights from the discussion board. That will provide some public recognition of those who take the time to post, and it might generate even more interest in the board.
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