Highley Recommended: To Give Credit Where Credit is Due... If You Can

Saturday, September 8, 2018

To Give Credit Where Credit is Due... If You Can

This week as we were in the midst of preparing for our upcoming Indiana Middle Level Education Association conference, I remembered a few tips and tricks that people have shared with me that caused some, "Aha!" moments. The fact that I can convert a google doc to an active webpage that updates; utilizing Google Drawings for a variety of tasks, especially in Smore newsletters; color-coding things in Google Keep: all of these things I learned from somebody... but I can't remember who! Odds are, many of the tech things I use came via Eric Curts, Alice Keeler, Kasey Bell, Classroom 2.0 Live webinars, Voxer groups (especially EduMatch), ICE Conferences, ISTE, Indiana Summer of eLearning, AISLE, and others. I'm often one of those learners who needs to hear things several times to fully grasp them, so some things that I've learned probably came from combinations of people.

My point: the power of networks can be exponential. The fact that I've been exposed to such helpful advice through a variety of platforms, from people with different approaches has added so much to my "personal toolbox." I wish I could thank people and say, "Remember when you showed us how to ___. I used it today and it was the exact thing I needed."

The same thing happens to me with books I read. I've tried many ways to track how I first heard of a book, whether it's a newspaper review, a blog post, Voxer friends (especially the #Read4Fun/Love to Read group), People Magazine, Parade Magazine, an email, a twitter chat, Facebook. I've tried Google Keep, Goodreads (but not easy to include before you read a book), a notebook, Google Docs and more. When I finish a book, often I'd like to thank the person who recommended it (or in some cases, say nothing and remember in the future that that person and I may not see eye-to-eye in books!)