As we wrap up the end of the semester it’s time to wrap up my blog posts for this class, sadly making this my final blog post for EDTC300. For this class to be the most beneficial for all of us, it required us to work as a network, one that goes beyond showing up to class once a week for Zoom Room. To really get the most out of this class we really needed to work on creating our Personal Learning Networks also know as PLN. 

One way I helped to contribute to the learning of others was by making sure I was reading a number of my classmates blogs and commenting when appropriate weekly.
While i did comment on lots of other blogs, one blog that particularly stood for me was Selina’s blog. She decided she was going to learn how to decorate cupcakes, but she seemed to be having a hard time finding a good buttercream recipe for decorating. I happen to make a lot of cakes for family members so I gave her a link to my favorite recipe and let her know that Icing lasts along time in the fridge.  As you can see by these comments pictured below. ?

I also contributed to other classmates learning by answering questions from within our Slack community when I had the answers, and by sharing resources I found while working on my own learning project. Some of these Resources I shared were things like virtual Piano lessons, or simple things such as sharing a link to a coupon for Micheal’s along with probably one of my most favorite new learning resources the Public library online resources that I talked about more in one of my previous blog Head in the Clouds . You can also see some of the ways I contributed from the pictures below ?

Another Way we worked on our PLN was by utilizing twitter to learn about and share new resources and to connect with other educators and people who use twitter. One of the ways I did this was by sharing resources and the odd Caturday post with the hashtag #EDTC300. At the start of the semester Twitter was something I really didn’t like, to me it was annoying and I never really understood the purpose or how it worked. But after using it pretty much everyday since the start of January I’ve come to see how beneficial it really is to creating a bigger PLN. After class is finished I plan on continuing to keep up with my Twitter account so I can continue to grow my network. Will I tweet everyday? probably not but I will make sure I am commenting on interesting posts and sharing interesting resources with my followers. As you can see from my twitter profile I started my account in January 2020 I now follow 90 people and have 50 followers which might not sounds like a lot but I started with 0 in January. Feel free to click this link and follow me if you don’t already!

Throughout my time on Twitter these past four months I contributed to my classmates learning by commenting and interacting on numerous posts by my classmates. as you can see by these photos below. ?

While this class might be over my learning about technology and how it can be utilized within the classroom is just beginning. I cant wait to see how large my PLN will get.

Coding is not something that I’ve ever been interested in, but my boyfriend is in school to become an Electronics Engineer so for the past couple of years he would continue to tell me what hes working on for class and I’d have no idea. I used to only ever use the computer as a last resource when I can’t do something on my phone but over the past year or so I’ve been using my computer more and more. To learn a bit about what my boyfriend was doing I bought 1 subscription box to Creation Crate, they send you one project a month to build and they progressively get harder.  I thought it would be a fun date night project my boyfriend on the other hand thought of it as more like more homework, building the actual lamp with the wires and board was fun to do together but when it came to the coding it became MY JOB, soo I downloaded the program it suggested and got to work following the instructions from the booklet, after about an hour I thought I was done, I plugged the lamp into the computer and to my surprise it didn’t work. I swore I followed the instructions to a T but little did I know the brackets they put around certain words were also supposed to be added, after a little fixing we tried again, and it still didn’t work. So by this time my boyfriend decided he would help and go through the code I coded, after searching for a while he finally found the one comma I missed. The lamp now works and I now understand why sometimes when he’s sitting at the computer the odd cuss word comes flying out of his mouth when the coding he’s spent hours on doesn’t work properly.

 Quiet honestly I thought that was enough coding in my life. It’s so tedious and time consuming, so when we were tasked to code something for this blog post I was dreading it. Sitting at the computer for hours on end is the thing I like to do the least. For my First Attempt I used Code Academy I created a free user account and decided to start the beginner code lesson on coding and variables, I Used the Screencast Chrome extension to record me following the tutorials on how variables work you can check that out here.

After finishing my first lesson (and Acing the test,) I decided to try out a second source called Studio Code. Studio Code is a bit more user friendly and also offers free accounts. After Signing up you can browse through plenty of different coding programs, such as learning to code games like Flappy Bird to Art programs and Basic Apps. I decided it would be fun to learn how to make an App! 

To start off Studio Code breaks down how to make an app in very basic steps, with video tutorials along the way to help you if you get stuck. After going through all 10 steps of learning how to create an app you are given the option to create your own app. So for the past 2 hours, I  worked on creating this cheesy little app, on Covid-19

you can click this link ?https://studio.code.org/projects/applab/Zt8egYnfU9nMM04YskJ0zHA8oYmmOMl6B5All0ugI6M

 or Scan this QR Code, to access it!  ?

After Creating this App I can see why coding is such an important thing all students should learn. When children are young we teach them where paper comes from and how food is made but we really never learn how games or even apps are made.  I think by giving children even a glimpse into how these things we use everyday are made, gives a new sense of appreciation to all the hard work that is needed to create these things. I myself will probably not voluntarily code but I now have the tools to do it , if  I needed to.