Well, here it is. After torturing myself this week by trying out a few new technologies, reworking old ones and racking my brain about how I'd like to record my reflections, I'm back at probably the first reflection tool put on the net...the blog. I've gone full circle in this search for a way to document my reflections, and potentially share them with others.
When I began this assignment of finding the perfect reflection tool for myself, I thought Foliospaces was my guy. I made an account and starting working within the technology. Because of its structure and elements like the resume section, it felt more like a portfolio to me than a place for reflecting on my effectiveness as an educator. Then I realized that within this technology, the methods of sharing my reflections wouldn't be as simple as I wanted them to be. I don't want other people to have to make an account and join a community in order to read my reflections. They just might not care that much.
So I started a Subtext account. I love this technology and will certainly utilize it in the future, but once I got into it and started playing around, I realized, I didn't want my reflections to be in yet another technology bound to its own "walls". I can put my own blogposts, videos, screenshots, etc. into Subtext and others could view it, make comments and such, which seemed like exactly what I needed. A community can develop around whatever I input into that software. But then, I began thinking that this technology is too much of its own animal. It is really great for instruction and I will use it, but it just is too much of an animal for reflection. I want something more organic, but still multi-media.
I went to Twitter. Twitter seemed too restrictive, although it is now streamlining photos and videos so they are embedded right in the tweets. But still, reflection can be wordy and 140 characters isn't often enough.
So, I began a new Facebook page. This seemed like the perfect solution. I can create a business page, separate from my personal Facebook page, where I can log reflections, include multi-media, and create a private group so those within my PLN can also have exposure to my reflections. As I was getting that setup, I had two thoughts. The first one is that I may want to include some information in my reflections that I wouldn't necessarily share with others, for instance, names of students, artifacts of their work, specifics about a conversation with a student, and the like. I may want to share some of that with others, but there could be times when that is not appropriate. My second thought was that this reflection is for me, not for others. This is the time I need to spend reflecting on whether my actions in the classroom are effective in fostering learning for my students. Again, I may want to share a good deal of this information with others, but for the most part, it is information that I will be using myself to improve my teaching skills. So, do I need all the fluff of these cool technologies? Yes, for some exercises I do, but probably not for reflection.
This is how I ended up back at the 'ol blog. Isn't this what she was made for, anyway? Reflection? In my brand new blog, I'm going to record my reflective thoughts about my teaching techniques, future plans, lesson ideas, successes in the classroom, failures in the classroom, keep track of student artifacts, upload inspiring videos and whatever else helps me help learners.
Why is my blog a perfect tool for this? Well, I can choose to publish my posts or not to publish them. I can send a link to a particular post of interest to another. I can copy and past my musings into an email or other electronic medium. I can share my entire blog, if that is applicable. I can choose what to share and what not to share. This post I will certainly publish.
Why else is my blog a perfect tool for reflection? It keeps my thoughts organized. My posts are organized by date and title. Also, I can tag my posts if I need to search for a particular post years down the road.
This was a really good experience in working through this reflection assignment. I reflected quite a bit on reflection and find that I'm back at my own Blogger blog. Hmmmmm. Maybe I was overthinking this entire issue...I'm not sure...I'll have to think about that a bit. :)
