Day 82: What We've Learned from HZN165

The Finish Line

In September, we set out to start a blog that would share the learning that takes place at Hilliard Horizon Elementary.  The idea came from a couple of other blogs that set out to share what they were learning everyday.  It has been a great experience and we have learned so much about ourselves and each other.

We are officially at day 165 on the project timeline.  So at the end, I'd like to share what we've learned from this project.

165 days was ambitious, but a worthy goal.  With 82 stories, it's easy to see that we didn't quite make it to 165.  However, I can tell you that even though we didn't post a story of learning every school day, great things happened at Horizon everyday -- more than what can be counted or captured in a story.

Failure is natural and should be embraced.  Did we meet our goal to publish a story every school day?  No.  But it's important to remember the original vision of the project: to share our stories with the world and to show that a learning community goes beyond the walls of the school.  In that respect, we succeeded.  We connected with 24 different countries, making our audience worldwide.  When we continue this project next school year, I doubt we will be as ambitious with the number of stories we aim to publish.  But how would we have known what was possible without setting a goal?  So did we fail? Yes, but failure is a natural part of learning and it can be a powerful force if we choose to learn from our failures.

Connecting our learning community to social media helped us to be lead learners.  Through this blog, we modeled how to interact with social media for our students and our community.  Let's face it: there are more poor examples of how to interact through social media than there are good examples.  By using Blogger, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitter to promote what we were learning and doing as a learning community, we modeled responsible use of social media for our kids.  We hope to build on this experience and continue to be the lead learners in this area to help our students engage with the world in a positive and productive way.

Finally, thanks to those of you who shared in our learning this school year.  We appreciate the support for the blog through your frequent visits.  You helped prove to us that our stories matter.  And, of course, thank you to those of you who published a story on the blog this year.  We couldn't have done this project without your support.

Have a great summer and we'll see you next school year!