The summaries of learning presented on Tuesday night were fantastic. I am blown away with the abilities of the students in this class. My hat is off to all of you that presented. I was surprised at all of the different types of presentations. Some of which I have seen before, but others I have only heard about. I would like to apologize to the community for the lack of constructive comments that I have offered. Many of you are light years ahead of me understanding the role of social media in education.  I read many of your blog posts, but could offer little in the way of  help as I was floundering my way through the course. I appreciated the comments left on my posts, you were all very helpful.

I am happy to say my final project is complete( kind of as I will explain shortly) and my own summary of learning is almost wrapped up. I have spent many an hour taping, and editing video. I have come to the point where I am efficient, not proficient, but efficient enough that having to edit is no longer paralyzingly frightening. With the help of a few guru’s at my school I have made great strides. My online PLN did not grow as many of yours have. I never seem to have trouble finding help with my questions. That may be why I have not developed my PLN. I seem to be physically surrounded by great, skilled people willing to share. I was having a conversation with a colleague in the staffroom about giving and receiving help from other teachers. She was expressing how she didn’t feel right asking other teachers for help, sometimes they wouldn’t or the price for help was too steep. I told her that I have never had that problem. She pointed out that of course I wouldn’t because I have lots to offer. I didn’t understand. She went on to explain that when I ask for help and someone helps me they knew that I would be able to return the favor because of my construction skills. Whereas some teachers don’t think they have any special skills that they can barter with. i had never thought of it that way before. To me it was simply if you can help then you help, if you know someone needs help then offer. Back to the project, as I was saying before I strayed off on a tangent. With the help of some great people I made the videos, created my very own youtube channel and uploaded the videos. I searched online for an acceptable(free) QR code generating program, assigned a code to each video, developed some signage for the machines and constructed the “phone booth”. The phone booth was a foreign concept to many of my students. They couldn’t understand why anyone would enter an “enclosed” space to talk on the phone. The videos are short lessons that “remind” students how to operate pieces of machinery, or perform other various tasks. At least that’s how I thought it would work. The students have other plans!! They come into class and ask what we are doing today then go and check the phone booth to see if there are any videos about the days topic. If there aren’t I certainly hear about it. They have even decided that maybe they should make some videos to help other students that are taking the class next semester  (rhyzomatic learning or what??). And of course they all have advice. You should have taped it from this angle, it’s too quiet, or dark, your shirt is the wrong colour and on and on.

Now an explanation of why my final project is kind of finished. After uploading the videos to my youtube channel, as I was watching my daughter play basketball, I got an email on my phone. It’s youtube, trottr100 has subscribed to my channel. He’s what? Why? and who the heck is trottr100? An hour later it happens again. colinjenny100 has also become a subscriber, not only that but he/she/they leave a comment,” loved your video keep them coming.” What?? No, no, no I don’t do this these were just for an assignment for a university class and I wonder how did they even find my channel???? Then it hits me, I made all of the videos public. Dag nabbit, that Shareski strikes again!! And the story doesn’t end there, tomorrow I am off to another school to collaborate with another construction teacher about my project and how I used the codes in my class and shot the video. There may never be an end……….

I placed the QR codes(as a docx file) on my school website so my students and colleagues can get to it. I placed 3 QR codes directly on my home page as examples for all. If you have a smartphone and a QR code reader app such as Scanlife(which is the one I use) you can scan it right from the computer screen.

Although I found this class a ton of work I really enjoyed having to be immersed in social media, at least for a little while. This class has introduced me to a lot of great examples of different ways to use social media in education and how students are going to use new technologies to learn.

Thank you Alec for your patience.

This old dog learned a lot of new tricks.

Enjoy your sabbatical. P.S. like your son I also hate shopping.