Reflection

The short timeline of this summer course affected the depth of my learning. Six weeks right at the end of the school year was an insufficient amount to time at exactly the wrong time to deeply engage with the material.

One improvement to my practice was that I spent some time improving and updating my school website during this course. While this was useful, since then I have completely redesigned it as a result of the release of new Google Sites.

The three year technology plan that I created for my library was also useful, and has been a guiding document although I have not been able to make as many significant technology purchases as I hoped to in that document. It was useful to evaluate what technology there was already in my library, how old it was and when I made need to consider replacing it. It was also good to dream, in an ideal world, what technology tools I would have and how those tools could impact student learning.

Partially as a result of this course, and also due to need within my district, I was involved in evaluating and planning for the purchase of district-wide subscription databases. The technology department in our district functions independent of other parts of the schools, and as a result tech tools tend to be purchased by individual schools or based on it being a "good deal" without consultation of educators who will be using them. I continue to work to improve communication around our technology purchases, and to encourage district-level purchasing whenever possible for better equity and to cut the costs of providing access to these resources for our students. One major success in this work was the district-wide acquisition of PebbleGo, an emerging reader encyclopedia that is an important tool for many of our learners.