Throughout the past seven weeks I have had the opportunity to engage with fellow education professionals and classmates to learn a variety of different skills, understandings and resources that can be implemented within my future teachings. Every evening during this spring term I have dedicated to EDTC300. One hour a night I spent going through twitter, reading the latest posts, commenting/answering questions to the best of my ability, and finding new resources to share with other educators. I ensured that I spent at least 40 hours on my learning project, which many of those hours were spent reviewing different learning platforms to share with others as well as to enhance my skill learning of origami. Every Saturday morning I spent reading other peoples blog posts from the week and making comments/sharing ideas. This class has taken time, but I am so grateful to have shared this experience and have had the opportunity to learn from such a diverse variety of individuals who have taught me so much.
Course Blog
Using the Course blog as a way to share ideas and contribute to others learning is something that I really valued and appreciated. Before starting this class, I had created an edusites account and used it for ECS 100. Even though I had my website up and running, I had a limited idea on how to use it. I didn’t know that you could blog on edusites until I began this class! Learning the skill of blogging is something I have always wanted to do, so I am grateful that Dr. Katia Hildebrandt (class professor) took the time to show us step by step how to not only create posts, but make them visually appealing.
For each prompted class blog post, I took the time to research the topic and gain a deep understanding before beginning to share my thoughts and ideas via my site. When writing the blog post, I made sure to include external information as well as extra resources/links where readers could find more information on the topic:
I also provided many reviews on different resources for readers of my blog to check out:
Within my blog posts I shared other classmates ideas using a pingback and suggested that readers check out their work
As I have previously mentioned, I spent every Saturday morning this semester reading classmates’ weekly blog posts! During this time I left comments, feedback and questions on fellow students’ work to learn about others thoughts and ideas as well as engage in a network of professional learning. I have enjoyed following each person’s learning journey and have been inspired by many to pick up new skills such as trying out recipes and learning ASL over the summer months. The following images are screenshots of some of the interactions I had on others posts. If the photos are blurry/unreadable, please check out the following link here
Another thing that I would like to highlight is the interaction of others and my responses that have been written at the bottom of my blog posts. I appreciate all of the feedback and questions that I have received and value others ideas that go along with what I have been posting.
Discord
Discord is an excellent tool that we used as a class to communicate, ask questions and respond. I am grateful that this platform was available and that we had a safe space to interact. I work during the day so I often missed chats and read them after they had happened. However, I did try to help others when possible! And I asked a question when needed about twitter. This platform wasn’t used a whole lot, but I believe that I helped with others’ learning where applicable.
Wowza! If you would like to read my initial thoughts on twitter, please check it out! My view of twitter has definitely changed over the past 7 weeks, in many different ways. First, I was not a fan of twitter going into this course, and was slightly terrified as well as unsure how I was going to participate and help others learn. Now, after spending at least one hour every evening (7 days a week) on twitter, reading tweets, checking out shared resources, commenting on posts, and tweeting/retweeting valuable information that I believe would benefit #EDTC300, I can confidently say that I have become totally comfortable using this platform! At the start of this term I had 0 tweets… I now have a total of 250+ (posting more than 5 tweets a day on average) and 61 followers!.
I absolutely love this platform as a tool to network with others and share valuable information/resources that can be implemented within the classroom. Contributing to others learning is a passion of mine, and I am grateful that this platform gave me the opportunity to do so!
- Participating in live twitter chats: This term I participated in the #SaskEdChat on two separate occasions on May 12th and June 16th . The live chats are held on Thursday evenings which was during the time that our EDTC300 lecture was held, so unfortunately I didn’t take part in as many as I would have liked, but I look forward to participating in many more moving forward during my internship and throughout my career. I would also like to take part in other live chats that are beneficial for educators. I tweeted a couple of times asking for recommendations and pinned it to the top of my twitter page for viewers. I was fortunate to receive feedback from both @kellywchris (host of #SaskEdChat) and fellow classmate @VRIGrabowski. I look forward to checking out the list of chats that they have shared with me. By participating in live chats, I contribute to others learning through thoughts, opinions and ideas
- tweeting /sharing resources- contributing to others learning
One of my favourite parts about this class is having this incredible platform to share resources on. I enjoyed reading through different tweets and retweeting ones that I thought would benefit pre-service and in-service teachers. I also enjoyed doing my own research and using feedly to find additional resources. The following pictures are examples of some posts I have made:
- Responding to other tweets: Each day I read through each of the tweets that had been posted by classmates, and commented on ones where I shared thoughts, questions and ideas in response.
The above is just a snippet of the tweeting that I have done that contributes to the learning of myself and others. If you would like to check out my twitter page @danica_finlay for many educational resources and tips, I would highly recommend it as this is something that I have worked hard on and would love to share with others!