Going into these two week courses, I was a bit skeptical that much knowledge could be imparted in such a short amount of time. Boy, was I wrong! There are so many wonderful things I have learned in these short two weeks that I plan to use moving forward. My enthusiasm is driving me to jump into too many things at once, so my goal is to slow down and focus on one or two things at a time so that I can learn to use and implement them well.
My first goal for next school year is to establish a classroom blog. I want to use this to develop two-way communication between myself and the families of my students. Fine-tuning the use of a blog in the classroom will help me to become comfortable with it so that I can continue this practice when I am a building administrator. It allows me to hit the ground running so that I can have a school-wide blog and establish connected communication with all of the stakeholders in my school (kids, parents, community, teachers, staff and beyond).
I'm also meeting with my principal in August to talk about using social media to connect with our community. We have a Twitter account currently, but it isn't being used. I am going to ask to take that over next year. I want to do some more research about using that tool effectively to connect stakeholders to my school and use it for positive public relations.
This year, iPads are also being rolled out to our 5th graders. While that doesn't impact my grade level, I would like to keep my finger on the pulse of how that goes. I plan to take part in some professional development about implementation of these devices as well. As I learn more, I would like to arrange some quality PD for my own staff surrounding ways to use the devices to connect our students to the world.
Beyond that, I want to grow a little more each year. As I become comfortable with one tool, I will add another and mess around with that. There are so many tools that I can see being useful in a variety of ways and I imagine more and more will come onto the scene as I make the shift to building leader.
