Chai Final Exam

As I sit here sipping my homemade chai, I can reflect on the progress I have made with my networked learning project.  Of course, I have learned how to make chai.  I have also learned a lot about the ingredients in chai, the culture surrounding chai, and the benefits of drinking chai.  For my final round of making this drink, I was attempting to make a spicier chai.  I discovered that ginger is the key ingredient that adds a kick to chai, so I followed another recipe and doubled the amount of ginger.  The result was a spicy cup of chai that rivals any I’ve had in expensive coffee shops.  I’m pleased with this recipe, but will continue to tweak it as I see fit.  I know there is a world of information out there and maybe one day I will post my own chai recipe online.  Maybe someday I’ll travel to India and order tea from a chai wallah like this one.

Besides learning how to make chai, I have also discovered ways of finding information online.  I am beginning to develop my Personal Learning Network (PLN) by connecting with others through Twitter and Google+.  This project helped me to practice the skills I need to develop an effective PLN.  I have found that blogs and comments on recipe sites have been the most useful while learning how to make chai.  One of the challenges is that there is so much information out there and much of it is conflicting, so it takes some time to sift through sites, examine and evaluate the information and boil it down to something that meets my needs.  This is a process I will ask my students to go through on a regular basis, so I am glad to have had the opportunity to practice it myself.

Here’s my video summarizing my networked learning project.  I made this using a free video-making app called Loopster.

cc image by pixabay