I’ve been catching up on my blog post reading (due to our 3-day weekend – thanks to the Queen for having a birthday) and this comment from CoolCatTeacher caught my eye.  So I went over to Lisa’s blog to read the entire post.  She is going to try one new thing a week.  Go Lisa!  Such inspiration!  I can do that!

That got me thinking.  I’ve been trying loads of new things this year.  YackPack, VoiceThread, TiddlyWiki, Wikispaces, CamStudio, FreeMind, Google MyMaps, Scratch, Splashcast, to name a few – and believe me – the list goes on! That also got me thinking – well …. no ….. better than that ….. it actually got me reflecting.

Just how effectively have I been using or teaching my students to use, these awesome new tools?

I’ve been asking my students to reflect on their learning journey  so far this year (as we are about 1/2 way through the school year).  I “pinched” a couple of questions from my good friend Kim’s Technology Design Cycle on reflection, and quite a few questions from the reflective teacher, reworded them a bit and got some stunning and very revealing answers.  By far,  the most reflective (and repeated) comment was ……

…… there’s so much going on, and we’re doing so much, we don’t have time to do it very well.

If I’m really honest with myself ….. it’s pretty much the same for me with all these new things too.  So I am going to take up the challenge to try something new each week – I’m just going to take it in a different direction.

I’m going to take one of those new things I’ve tried so far ….. and I’m going to do something with it ……. better!

Are you going to take up the challenge too?