Thing 5: Reflective Practice

Photograph by the italian voice.  Available under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 2.0) license.

Over the past few weeks, I have learned some things about myself.  Blogging was both part of the attraction of this project and something which made me nervous.  When I began the project, however, my first experiences were contagious!  I interacted with individuals from across the world, learned from my fellow bloggers, and had success with other adventures I began as a result of the project.  I need to participate in more groups like this one: It connects me with others and exposes me to tools I may never have discovered on my own.  I have more or less settled into a routine since those first few days.  Finding the time to post is as much of a struggle as I had feared, but it continues to be rewarding nevertheless.  Every time I sit down to tackle the next task or to explore other participants' blogs, I leave inspired and happy--even with the whittled down group of active participants.  Reading others' responses and thoughts encourages me to post my own.  I continue to add other participants to my RSS feed and to bookmark posts that I find particularly helpful. 

This routine seems to work well for me:


1.  Read the introductory post on the cpd23 page.  Even before I officially registered, I added the blog to my RSS collection and having it there has been invaluable.  I regularly check my Google Reader page, which means that I know right away what I should be focusing on in the week.

2.  Spend the next few days thinking over the week's Thing, considering how I already use (or do not use) it and how it might be useful.

3.  Sit down and really explore the topic, watching videos or reading overviews of it and then experimenting with it on my own.

4.  Read other participants' posts.  Ask myself: Do they share my thoughts on the topic?  What were their experiences with it?  Did someone say something illuminating?

6.  Think about what I might want to write about the topic.

7.  Begin writing.  Usually, the end product contains most of the ideas I had originally planned to include, but in a different format than I had envisioned.


I will continue to use this method over the next few weeks.  Thank you to all the other participants!