Week 9, Thing 23

This has been a great program, and I am very grateful to the CSLA team for putting it together. Here are my answers to the survey questions:

• What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey? I liked so many of them. I think one of the most fun was Image Chef, and I've already taken advantage of it to make a couple of images I inserted in my library brochure I give out each fall. I really liked all the online graphics generators we explored. I was also especially happy to explore del.icio.us and start using it on a regular basis. Becoming more aware of many possibilities with wikis was also great.
• How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? It made me aware of a number of new tools, and greatly added to my planned "to do" list. For example:
• 1. I plan to use wikis (with which I had no previous experience) for a forum for my book club and to set up pathfinders for research projects. Even though I do already have a website for my library, I think the wiki medium will be more flexible and easier to work with than updating webpages in Dreamweaver and will allow for teacher participation. I am going to have to do some more research to decide which wiki software to use.
• 2. I have started maintaining website links in del.icio.us, and think that will work better moving back and forth between my home and work computers.
• 3. I plan to take advantage of the different online graphics generators to liven up my library orientations.
• 4. I plan to learn more about creating podcasts and have students make book recommendation podcasts in the fall. I might also try to create a podcast as part of a self-running orientation for students who come to our school after the beginning of the school year.
• 5. I did already have a librarything account, but I want to add more books to it and take advantage of its feature to display books on my website and my blog.
• Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? Even though I had already used several of the tools in the tutorials, I was surprised how much more there was to learn about them. I was also surprised how many great tools there are out there. Some I had heard about but not had a chance to explore yet, and others were brand new to me.
• What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? I thought everything was great. What I never did get to do enough of, though, was check out other participants' blogs. I dipped into a number, but am sure there's a lot of great stuff out there I missed. Perhaps one of the "cheerleaders" could bring some of the top examples to our attention as we work through the tutorials. Also, when I received comments in my blog, I would have liked to have had those peoples' email so I could easily write back and thank them. Perhaps next time we could be encouraged to share emails.
• If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate? Definitely.
• How would you describe your learning experience in ONE WORD or in ONE SENTENCE, so we could use your words to promote CSLA learning activities? Energizing.