Leading up to the second face to face meet I have been going back and forth about what I would like to blog about. It became apparent to me that based on the time crunch of my educational life, the internal school blog I keep may take precedence in sharing of information. But that blog is about sharing highlights of a class to a community of parents, what excited me about the Cohort and the opportunity of this blog was that this was about my practice. However, it is this idea that this blog is for me and about my practice and often I have a hard time separating my practice from my students.

For example, I would sit down each week at different times and try and think of something I would “like” to blog about, perhaps something that was bouncing around in my mind about my teaching, or share the latest anecdote from a math book I was reading, or even build off of some professional development I had just attended. But I find that blogging about these things for me at this point seems like more of a fruitless endeavor, that is to say, I am still working towards seeing how putting these thoughts online will aid me in my practice. Building on this question, one of the things I have realized is that I use Cohort 21 for relevant information in the educational field. The daily updates, others twitter accounts, have provided information that I have been able to use and connect with personally and professionally.

What is clear for me is that working with younger aged children I find my use of technology to be more responsive to a need. Because of the developmental age of my students (Grade 1 and 2), technology is not as prevalent in my space as I feel it may be in others. That is not to say it isn’t used on a daily basis through cameras, video, word processing, research, but it seems as though it is much more as a consumer than anything else. This is definitely something I want to change and as I begin to think about some action research I want to undergo with Cohort 21, I believe that this is the angle I am taking.

Last week as I began writing report cards and sharing a Google doc with my teaching team it is clear that I am already beginning to use some of the skills I have learned in the first Face to Fact of Cohort 21 and that this use of technology is making things easier for me. It was from this connection that I decided to step back and think about how I could be using WordPress, Diigo and Twitter for.

I’ve made a decision to use Twitter as a sort of day by day highlight reel of my classroom. One of my followers asked me the other day. I have invited colleagues, parents and other educators to follow under this premise. I think I have always had this transparency with my work in the classroom and I believe this is a type of sharing I can get behind. I must admit that I find Twitter a much easier way to consume information, but I still hesitate with the sharing, for fear of it seeming too narcissistic. I found that the first couple tweets I shared, I really didn’t feel contributed to my own growth or the betterment of my practice, which is why I feel that some type of change was needed. I am comfortable sharing from a “school lens” and am excited about the possibilities that this may hold in continuing to make my classroom and our school accessible.

So if anything, this blog and the Cohort are allowing me to be reflective on my use of technology personally and in my practice, as well as providing a sounding board for me to hash out potential areas of interest in further study.

Even as I write this, I am excited about meeting to talk more however still have hesitation around the way in which I am using this technology and the tools. But I think that’s okay.