Week 9, Thing 23: Summarizing My Thoughts

As I was considering graduate work in library science about two years ago, a mentor of mine at Concordia College brought this program to my attention.  I was very impressed with its focus and the way in which it inspired "playing" instead of just watching.  Even though I started with the best of intentions, I was unable to keep up with it.  However, as the 23 Things became a part of my coursework, I was thrilled to be able to make a second attempt.

Because I already strive to bring the 2.0 world into my class as a way to engage students, this program just inspired me to do more and think even more broadly.  Tools, such as Flickr and Delicious, had been on my radar, but I had never attempted to use them.  I failed to see what role they could have in my classroom.  The whole idea of social tagging seemed ridiculous and I often questioned the point of its existence.  But as I played with both tools, I saw the advantage of teaching students how to classify and use classification online, as well as use the tagging as way for me to more adequately find sources that other people have deemed useful.  The social aspect of social tagging, ensures that someone finds the tag useful.  And if that someone has the same interests as you do, there is a high likelihood that those tags will be useful to you as well.  Both tools are great resources as we continue to teach students how to determine main ideas, classification of knowledge, and being global (and online) citizens.

I am hoping that this program can be used as professional development within my district. I truly believe it would transform the way that we look at teaching. As a member of our 21st Century Skills Committee, I would strongly recommend the use of the 23 Things as a model for professional development.  One thing that hinders us, however, is the that many of these tool are blocked sites for our district.  I am wondering how we could get around that.  The larger question, is how do change the mindset of blocking to a mindset of allowing with caution?  When we block, we avoid.  When we allow, we have the opportunity to teach how to appropriately use these tools.  For our current middle schoolers, they need lessons in how to communicate in this format.  How can we do that if the tools that we need are blocked?

The only mini-frustration I had was that a couple of the links were no longer active.  To me, it is crucial that those links be checked and dropped if they are no longer existent.  They will just be frustrating to those of us trying to explore and might discourage future curiosity.

That said, this exploration and play at its best!  I took much longer than I am sure I needed because I got caught up in the learning.  Isn't that what we hope for our students?  That they get caught up in it?  Thanks for a great journey!