As I reflect on my contributions to the learning of others in this course, I’m struck by how intentional online connection needs to be. Social media has certainly expanded our reach, but when we’re interacting with people who aren’t physically around us, the ties often don’t feel as strong. This course challenged me to step outside of that and actively engage in meaningful conversations around technology and education. What follows is a summary of what I believe I brought to our learning community.
Commenting on Others Blogs
My blog, and exploring others blogs was my main source of discussion outside of class. I made sure to explore posts via our blog hub, and I commented when I felt I had something to add. Sometimes I asked questions, sometimes I shared ideas, sometimes I connected my learning to theirs, and sometimes I reflected on the topics that they brought forward.
Questions
I believe that being genuinely curious about others is a vital part of both learning and teaching. Curiosity opens the door to deeper understanding of content, perspectives and the thoughts of others. In the classroom, we often use questions to prompt thinking in our students, but those same questions can also help us grow as learners ourselves. Throughout this course, I tried to approach discussions with that same mindset. The questions I asked were meant to spark reflection, invite others to share their insights, and create space for meaningful exchange.
Sharing Ideas
Sometimes when we read the work of others we make connections to what we are currently working on or sometimes it triggers a memory of something worth sharing. The comments above are examples of when I shared links, gave teaching ideas, or alluded to something I had learned while doing my research for the week. My favourite comment above was when I was sharing a memory of a trip I did with my french class as a student. This experience was so meaningful that it has stuck with me all of these years. I think that is the type of inspiration we should strive to create in our schools.
Reflecting
At times reading others thoughts caused me to gain a new perspective on an issue that I felt compelled to share. The collage above is a collection of some of my more in depth reflections. During this course I wrestled with my thoughts and beliefs around AI and technology bans the most, and the length and thought I put into these reflections stems from that. I think that sharing open and honest conversation with others has the power to show new perspectives and elicit the same contemplation in others.
Shoutout to Discord
I didn’t engage nearly as much with discord as I did with my blog, and the blogs of my classmates, but I did find it a useful space for troubleshooting. I had technical issues at one point related to my school firewall, and I appreciated the suggestions of my classmates for fixing this issue. In the end I figured out the problem myself, but I made sure to report back just in case anyone else ran into the same issue.
I added a video version of this post, because I couldn’t get my text to be clear on my blog. I think it has something to do with the picture limitation size! The video below has a slideshow of some of my comments as well as an AI voiceover of the text on this page.