First Year ...

... A Reflection

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Next Tuesday, July 12, marks my first year as a District Instructional Technologist with the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School System. I have very much enjoyed my first year. I have learned a lot during this year. There have been some highs and lows, but overall a great first year.

Blogging:  I have been blogging more this year. I am still not great at it, but by continuing to write, I have gotten better and will continue to get better. My biggest challenges with writing a blog is figuring out what to write about and coming up with a catchy title. As you can see from this title, I still haven't conquered that. I will continue to work on this. We write on a weekly basis (sometimes more than that) for our departmental blog. I have enjoyed this, and I think our department writes about a lot of interesting tools, web sites, ideas, etc.

Twitter: I was pretty much a "lurker"on Twitter for a long time. I kept thinking that I really had nothing to share with people and would re-tweet people who I knew had something more important to say than I did. As I got used to Twitter, I started adding to who I was following. I follow some very amazing people. Through them, I have learned so much. I have learned that by talking with each other virtually, you still get to know a person. When you are lucky enough to meet them in person, it is like meeting a good friend. I hope to meet more of my Twitter friends in the future. Someone from my PLN said this and it has always stuck with me: I am fairly bright on my own, but with my PLN behind me I am brilliant! 

Web 2.0 Tools: Because of my friends in our Skype group, my Twitter friends, and the people in my department, I have started using more Web 2.0 tools. My top 5 favorites (I will exclude Blogger and Twitter since I have talked about them previously) are:Glogster EDU; Edmodo; Symbaloo; Livebinders; and Wonderopolis/Thinkfinity. I have written about most of these in previuos blog posts.

ActivInspire: A big part of my time the last several months have been learning about ActivInspire and the Promethean ActivBoards. I have enjoyed learning the software and the educational activities that can be created with it.

Some of my highs this year was presenting for the first time at the state technology conference (NCTies), presenting for the first time at a national conference (National Center for Family Literacy), and working with teachers to help them integrate technology into their lesson plans. A low point was realizing that sometimes you can't please everyone. Let me just say that my high points far outweighed the few low points I had.

I am eagerly looking forward to year 2 and all the learning it will bring.