Thursday, 26 March 2015

Vision Project In Progress

While deciding the project for this final assignment was relatively obvious for me and my goals, deciding how to go about that has not been! I just watched Aziz Ansari's recent comedy act and he does a bit on how the internet has made us obsess about getting "best" everything. Can't just buy a toothbrush, have to google "the best" toothbrush"! I was having a touch of must-be-the-best syndrome with this project and then realized as long as we TRY our best, the end result will be of value.

I've decided to create a teacher resource link on my school Library blog (click here). After some feedback I realized password protection was not necessary and that actually some students may benefit from the content as well. I would have preferred to have a separate menu tab for this information, but on the free wordpress accounts the menu tabs are static and I'm unable to do individual posts there. So I've created a category, with a menu page that automatically collects that category, but my main feed will still be cluttered with teacher posts which is what I had wanted to avoid. I briefly thought about just having a link to a different teacher specific blog, but the idea of clicking 3 separate links to get there seemed cumbersome. So. It is what it is and I can always tweak as I go!


    photo courtesy http://www.brendaobannion.com/teacher.htm

Next I've created a list of tools, articles and links that I think will be helpful for my colleagues and myself. The laborious part is creating samples and demos for how those tools work, within a context that seems useful. So for example, not just creating a sample padlet, but creating something that I can use in the future, or that will my colleagues will see as valuable, such as a padlet on Residential Schools.

I'm still unsure of how wide a scope I will exercise with regards to topics. I had originally wanted to focus specifically on tech tools and inquiry, but does a definitive focus attract more users because it's targeted or does it exclude those who may be looking for other resources? I think the latter, but I will start with my two goal topics and go from there.

Overall, I'm very happy with how my blog has progressed. I've created a symbaloo which I think is a great depiction of my learning thus far and will be helpful for both myself and my colleagues and am looking forward to posting more!

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2 comments:

  1. Aaron Mueller27 March 2015 at 06:45

    Well done! Your teacher resources page is starting to come together well and your reflection here was helpful, insightful and honest about the roadblocks, re-thinks and the creative process slowed down. It is very helpful for others to glimpse into the construction phase of any project and to see and read the reflections and re-directions. No project ever goes exactly as planned and being flexible enough to redesign and re-focus as you go was excellent.

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  2. nwallace2 April 2015 at 20:39

    Thanks for sharing your thinking. I agree that having a limited scope of topics may make some people feel excluded, but you could use this as a way to engage them. You could ask your audience for suggestions on what topic they would like to see included next. This way you could ensure that the content is tailored to the users and that everyone ends up feeling represented without feeling too overwhelmed yourself. Although you want to provided all the information everyone could need it would be exhausting creating such a resource. By slowly adding topics as they are suggested hopefully you never feel too bogged down! I look forward to see the final product and how it is received by your staff!

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