Week 9: Thing 23!

Week 9 or Week 15 or however long it has taken me to complete these 23 things...I definitely took more time on certain things than I thought I would. I also found that I was easily sidetracked and delved much more deeply into some things than was necessary. I only say this because I became overwhelmed by the options.

The creative commons license is genious. Sadly, so much of what our teachers and students want to use is not licensed under creative commons...rather, it has a straight-up all rights reserved copyright. I have definite concerns about fair use, copyright, plagiarism and cheating in using using some of these technologies...but I also believe that Web 2.0 applications are worth these risks and provide many teachable opportunities as long as we stay on top of them!

Here are some final thoughts using the prompts from CSLA:

1. What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey? I loved playing with Shelfari (for my RI Teen Book Award reading), LibraryThing (for my children's book collection), and finally getting my NetVibes page together. Zoho also has unlimited potential...
   
2. How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals? This program has piqued my interest in many new web applications; but more importantly, because I have been able to play with them, I am comfortable enough to choose a few to focus on in my library for next year.
   
3. Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you? I was surprised at how easy it was to create my own search engine with Rollyo and how timely that week's "thing" was...it coincided perfectly with a literary analysis that all juniors were doing. And I've been able to add a Shakespeare criticism search as well. It's such an issue when students search "Fate in Romeo and Juliet" and the first page of results in Google are all from paper mills.
   
4. What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept? I think the format and concept of the program were great. Nine weeks seemed like more than enough time at first, but as I became engrossed in the discovery exercises, I found that the whole thing took more time than I intended. I also explored quite a bit and digested it for a week before posting...perhaps that was just procrastinating. I'm glad the time frame was extended and I obviously took all the time allotted to finish (less one day).
5. If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you choose to participate? Absolutely.
6. 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? Radical.