Reflection on Goals

Goal 1 - To embrace tools such as blogs, PLNs, and Twitter in an effort to enhance my teaching.
Goal 2 - Expend my knowledge base so that I am a better resource for the staff and students at my school.
Goal 3 - Enjoy learning new things with a group of new people.

I am steadily moving toward the goals I established at the beginning of the semester.  Goals 2 and 3 have seen the most growth.  I have enjoyed connecting with classmates through blogs and learning about their struggles and accomplishments.  I guess this is where my growth mindset is strongest.  I am open and willing to put in the effort to make connections and grow personally and professionally.  On the other hand, goal 1 has been a struggle.  I have had a fixed mindset towards most social media.  Up until my course work for this degree I never saw any need for social media.  Here is where you as a reader will probably...GASP! I looked at social media as a way to waste time reading through nonsense that people posted about themselves.  This began to change when I created a Twitter account for a class a few semesters ago.  I began to follow several people that I saw at a tech conference.  They were not posting the useless information about what they ate for breakfast.  They were tweeting relevant Ed Tech material.  I suddenly realized what Eduardo Briceno was referring to in his Ted Talk when he said " The key to success is a growth mindset."  Changing the way I felt about social media was like turning on a light switch.  My brain went from being like an old timey black and white TV to one with 1080p wide screen LED brilliance. Okay okay.  Maybe that is a bit of a stretch, but things do seem to be different.  Six months ago I would have laughed if someone ask me to Tweet something.  Now I Tweet several things a week.  It may not sound like much, but I have Tweeted 20+ things in the past two weeks.  This would not have happened if I had stayed with my fixed mindset.  Dr. Green has helped me to develop this new mindset.  The materials that are posted in each module light the way to, as Carol Dweck says, "develop intelligence throughout life."  This is the very essence of the growth mindset.

There is one part of my first goal that I still need help with...my blogging skills.  I do not mind reading blogs that other people write.  I find that to be interesting.  However, most of the time I do not feel that I have anything worth while to say.  Hey! It sounds like that fixed mindset is creeping back in.  Out! Out! Darned fixed mindset!  I think what I need to do is look at blogging as a reflection tool.  This way I will not worry about other people's opinions.  I can focus on what went well and what could use a little more polishing.  Blogging, like any other task, can only improve with practice.