One of the first things we talked about in this class is that throughout our journey is this class we have the opportunity and are encouraged to help one another learn. Having this made clear right off the hop helped for and my classmates be engaged. With having a class full of diversity, it helped learning from others and hearing about different perspectives to further our learning and understanding. I am glad this was something we all had to work towards as I continually saw effort made by each student to contribute to each other’s learning. I am lucky to say I contributed to others learning, whether it was during class zoom, blog comments/interactions, or in the discord.
During Class Zooms
Sometimes you can dread taking an online class and being in zoom every week but that was not the case with this class. Whether we were listening or discussion there was always so much learning going on each day. One of the major contributors to this was all of the breakout rooms we did. Although I did not have my camera on during lectures, I made sure to turn my camera on and unmute myself when I wanted to speak. I have been a part of zoom breakout rooms where classmates will just sit there with a black screen and on mute. Those breakout rooms usually seem like they last forever. During our class zooms I felt each time I was in a breakout room the time flew by as every time I was with students who mostly had their cameras on but always unmuted to speak. We countless great discussions where I heard other perspectives and gained new ideas and thoughts because of my classmates.
When thinking about our breakout rooms I think of one example where we were discussing AI and the use of technology growing up. With how diverse our classroom is, not only did I share the same experiences with others but heard about different experiences and knowledge from my diverse classmates. I clearly remember this time because it was 6-7 minutes long and I thought going into it, it would seem like forever but that was not the case. Each person contributed to the conversation and had thoughts to share. I believe our breakout rooms were a crucial part to making classes seem engaging and fun for all. Breakout rooms were a huge contribution to our learning, and I felt I always made a solid effort to contribute to others learning during this time. I believe I always made my best effort to help others learn and share ideas to further expand discussions and learning with my classmates.
Blogging
Blogging was a big part of this class. I would be a liar if I told you at the start of the year it is something I think I would enjoy, but man was I wrong. I quickly became engaged not only with my blog but the amazing blogs of my fellow classmates. The way these blogs were set up to be accessible all on one feed made it easy to follow along my classmates’ journey of learning throughout the class. I knew I would not be the only one who did not think they would love blogging, so I always made an effort to be positive and encourage my classmates on their blogs. I always thought to myself what would be something I would want to hear, which is obviously something positive rather than negative.
For example, here are some encouraging words I shared with my classmates:
Whether it was reading about something I never knew about, or something I found interesting I always tried to bring that positive attitude of affirmation to my classmates to give them the push to keep going. I believe I contributed well thought out comments that gave a strong message of encouragement to them. I always found reading comments on my blog that made me smile or feel good pushed me to keep going and give my full effort on my blog. I always tried to be authentic and relatable when making comments on my classmates’ blogs as I wanted them to know there were always genuine. The blogs were such a big part of journey in EDTC300 so I wanted to contribute to others by helping them get through and always encourage them to present their best through their blogs! This was also shown to me through the comments left by my classmates which contributed to me work harder each week to provide great content for them to read!
Here are some of my others comments I kept track of throughout this class– Contributions to the Community Log.docx
Discord
Lastly, discord was something that we all had access to throughout this class. For myself I have used discord here and there for things like gaming or sports discussions but never for class. I thought this was a really cool way for myself and classmates to engage with one another and contribute to each other’s learning. It was very easy to use and for myself always having my phone with me I never missed something. Even something like not knowing if we had class or not, I could easily be reassured by looking at discord and seeing what is going on. I think for myself with it being something I was not used to using for class it was not my strongest in this class. I wish I could have shared more resources, but I always made sure to engage with ones that were shared with me.
Here are some examples of my engagement in discord and participation while contributing to other’s learning:
I believe it is always important to be heard, therefore I tried my best to reply to resources that were shared after checking them out for myself. I believe this contributed to other’s learning because having that positive reassurance of something can help others to continue to share things and know that people are checking them out.
Leave a Reply