Keeping a Wish List

Great Idea Wish List

The best metaphor I have come up with for wading through the plethora of great ideas I encounter through social media and blogs is an Amazon Wish List. I oppose this metaphor to the cliche of trying to "keep up with the Jonses." As a connected educator, I do feel the pressure to keep up with the current trends, especially in regards to edtech. But if I adopt this attitude I will implement ideas that may be good, but are implemented at the wrong time and without a complete understanding. It would be like impulse buying a cast-iron skillet because I saw someone on America's Test Kitchen cook an amazing steak.

Instead, I try to take the Amazon Wish List approach to the new ideas I come across online. If I read a blogpost that describes a new tool or website that may be valuable, I add it to a mental "buy it later list" that I keep in my head. This technique allows me to track if something is just a fad or truly has lasting value. Instead of jumping on the latest trend, I can ask myself a few months later if people are still talking about this idea. Does this idea meet a real need in my classroom? Will this idea help me supplement my teaching? Frequently ideas I encounter online may not make it into my classroom until six months or a year down the road. The point of implementation usually occurs when I hit a roadblock in lesson planning and then I remember that idea I had mentally saved in my "Edtech Wish List."

One current example is the use of student blogging and digital badges. Both of these ideas have been around for awhile and I have known that I wanted to try them out. But the right situation hadn't occurred in which I could implement these ideas naturally in my class. But this quarter I am teaching a nine-week digital photography course and both of these ideas fit in perfectly. I wanted my students to track their progress as photographers and celebrate their successes. Blogging helps them reflect on that they are learning and digital badges let me celebrate their milestones.

So in the constant flow of ideas that you run across on the internet, don't be ashamed to add them to a "Wish List" (mental, digital, or written down somewhere) to implement later. You will probably implement the idea better and with more energy this way. And be patient with others who have not implemented in their classrooms that one idea that now you can't live without. It may be on their wishlist and they are just waiting for that right moment to put it into action.