To begin with the first week’s reflection, I would like to provide an introduction to who I am and how I have been growing up in a world that has an increasing level of technology everyday. I have found that I am always learning about different digital techniques and this has been placed in full notion through the greater presence of the COVID-19 Pandemic yet I feel that many of these technology based factors will continue to hold their presence.

Being born at the start of the 2000’s I am able to say that I have seen the online world grow, yet I never was an active member of this new world. In the end of elementary school was when I first started using either class tablets or laptops to work on different assignments and group based projects. This continued into the High School environment where laptops and platforms such Google Classroom became very common. I find that I have adapted well to using these different programs yet I realized their applications were centred around just academic and learning principles. In order to understand how technology can be used to communicate and spread different forms of media and information, I needed to familiarize myself with the concept of blogs and blogging. This started when I joined the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina and right away began working with an interactive blog. This changed my thoughts of blogging and I became more comfortable expressing myself in this manner. The only challenge that I find blogging presents, comes in the form of ensuring it is created in the right way. This includes editing and adding additional resources, which I believe I will become more familiar with as this class and my learning progress.

The concept of blogging to many seem uneffective to some as they will utilize different forms of social media and interactive platforms to reach out to friends or peers, and keep up with current events in the world. I think that blogging is effective for many other reasons than keeping in contact with peers. As pointed out in different articles assigned to the EDTC 300 class, online presence will soon be a guiding factor in many different career opportunities, as seen through Dan Schawbel and the points mentioned in his article. This is important to keep in mind as blogging allows for different academic and personal achievements to be highlighted, for example when looking at a series of highlighted blogs posted by teachers we see that the points they mention are often what is sought after when looking into career pathways. This is interesting to me as before hearing this I was only aware of my written resume.

Through use of more forms of technology that will be presented in class I am looking forward to new ways in which I can contribute to my online community and colleagues. It will be with it’s challenges yet the rewards will be much greater.