Connecting, Contributing, and Commenting
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”
Benjamin Franklin
When I enrolled in this EDTC 300 course, I expected to learn about all the different tools we can use in the classroom, how to use them, and why they support our student’s learning. What I didn’t expect was to the emphasis on connecting and contributing to other’s learning, outside of my personal learning. Throughout the short time of this course, I’ve worked on class assignments, a personal learning project, and learning about new tools for the classroom, but I’ve also interacted with my peers and other educators online.
My interactions are mainly within these four categories:
Commenting on Blog Posts
My blogging experience prior to this course was extremely limited to my personal contributions; I would read blogs on things I was interested in, or make blog posts for other courses in the hopes that no one besides the instructor would read them. This course was different, because part of the requirement was to comment on our peers’ posts each week! This was a great experience for me because I was able to learn more about my peers, and also see how others were learning and progressing in their own projects. Some of my peers even chose ASL (like my learning project), and those were extremely helpful as we shared resources and compared progress. For other projects, I was able to ask questions or offer advice if their project was in my field! Here are some screenshots of my commenting contributions:
Discord
Discord is traditionally a social platform for gamers. You can talk, video chat, and stream whatever you are doing to your friends or even completely random people online. There are also communities called “servers”, usually dedicated to a specific topic or group. Our EDTC300 class made a Discord server, and in it we would discuss how we were feeling throughout the semester, ask questions, and offer advice! Here are some of my contributions to my classmates:
We were discussing ways to record our final summary of learning, and I offered up Zoom as an easier-to-use alternative
Making assumptions (and being wrong) while trying to figure out deadlines, and finding a peer to work with for a cybersleuthing activity
Personal Blog Posts
While most of my blog posts have been centered on my learning project and the progress of my ASL skills, I’ve also taken time throughout the semester to reflect on the various discussions we have had in class, like digital literacy, digital identity, and digital citizenship. These discussions and subsequent blog posts have been very informative for me, as they are topics I have not considered before and just generally assumed would “work themselves out” when I start teaching. Making these blog posts has contributed to others’ learning, based on some of the comments I have received! Here is a gallery of some of these posts and comments:
Twitter was definitely a mainstay for this course! We were encouraged to interact with our peers, but also to build a professional profile and network. So, I started following a bunch of the school divisions in Saskatchewan, as well as the schools where I live and some of the teachers I have worked with! It is really amazing the kind of resources and insight you can gain from teacher accounts on Twitter. I used Twitter to share resources, comment on my classmates tweets, and also to participate in a SaskEdChat!
I have never had a course where I needed to interact and connect so much with my classmates and with the digital community, but I think that as a future educator, putting yourself out there is so important! Teachers spend all day trying to connect and build relationships with students within the classroom, and doing those same things from a digital perspective is just building those same skills, albeit in a different format. I plan on continuing to connect, contribute, and comment on all things teacher-y going forward!