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Thing 31: Final Reflections - Lia Williams


As with Cool Tools Session #1, I learned plenty from this session that I was able to incorporate into my teaching practice (and even one thing that applied for my home-life/own kids!). 

For school, I was able to incorporate a few different tools in my practice...from Flubaroo to GoogleSlides, to different ways to assess and provide feedback to students.  Personally, I created a library for my 5-year-old son using Padlet, and it turns out that another PD that I did used Padlet as a response tool as well.  I'm glad I got familiar with it through Cool Tools so that I knew how to use it without any glitches. 

A few other people in my building have done at least one Cool Tools session, so I really enjoyed talking with them about what they chose to explore. Some chose different "Things", and some chose the same "Things" that I did. I was able to learn about tools that I didn't explore, and I was also able to see what others did for the tools that I did explore. It's interesting to see how different a person's final product can be even when exploring the same tool. 

I did implement a few things in my classroom that worked pretty well, and that I'm likely to use again: GoogleForms and Quizlet for sure. I'd love to develop mini-quizzes or games for each of the major units that I teach, but that will take some time to develop. I've already shared both platforms with a few other teachers who are tech-savvy, and I've encouraged them to explore them by signing up for this PD next year (if offered) and getting credit to make their class more engaging and quicker on feedback. 

I really enjoy learning on my own, and I like being able to see who else is signed up via GoogleClassroom so that I can reach out, ask questions, and bounce ideas off of those who are working on some of the same tools. 

What's great about Cool Tools is that you can do this PD 5 times and not even explore a fraction of what's available out there. I would definitely do this PD again because it is done on my own time, sometimes from the couch, and I can take as much time as I want to explore (usually spent more than 2 hours on exploration because there's just so much!). 

Comments

  1. pollyalidaMay 20, 2019 at 6:57 PM

    Excited to hear that you and your colleagues are sharing what you explored! Really amplifies the value of the work you've all be doing for the workshops. Thanks for participating and sharing your discoveries and ideas!

    ReplyDelete

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