It was a great experience being within this class with a diverse group. Many of us were different ages, at different years within our education journey, and all have different experiences related to teaching, tech and more. Having all these different backgrounds is great for contributing to each other’s learning process. We were set up in many different ways to be able to contribute. I was very happy to see how we all played a role in contributing to each other’s learning in many different ways throughout the semester. Some of the contribution opportunities includes class time, blog comments and discord – Here is how I personally used each –
Class Time – I really enjoyed this class overall, the time we spent in class I found to be very valuable and engaging. I specifically enjoyed having the opportunities to be in breakout rooms often within class time. It is definitely much easier to contribute within these breakout rooms than it is as the whole group. I always tried my best to offer my input within these breakout rooms and do my part to ensure the task at hand was getting done. These were also great for having some time to get to know our other classmates and make those connections to be able to help each other throughout the course.
One example that stuck out to me was doing the CRAAP test on the Pacific NorthWest Tree Octopus website. We were in our breakout rooms and all had a chance to discuss the CRAAP test and explore the website using it. We decided to take some time on our own then come back together as a group. It was great hearing everyone’s different interpretations of the websites and our experience using the CRAAP test. We were even able to go above and beyond and take time to discuss how we would go about/how it would look in our future classrooms.
Blog Comments – Blogging is something I did not have a lot of experience with. It was great having blogging broken down to us and allowed us to be successful creating our own blogs throughout this course. I also greatly enjoyed having easy access to my classmates’ blogs so I could frequently check up on them and see what they had to say about each class’s topic and how they are doing on their learning project. I enjoyed reading all these and seeing how different or similar everyone would interpret the topics along with choices made for learning projects. When it came to commenting on others blogs I thought about my personal experiences when going about it. I understood the good feeling of someone reading your post and giving it compliments or suggestions and I wanted to give that feeling back to others.
One example that really sticks out to me was on a classmate’s learning post. I was reading about her experience taking photos using her phone and I instantly thought of an app that I have been using. I took the time to comment on her post and suggested that she try out the app! I was happy to go back a few weeks later and see that she not only checked out the app but she really enjoyed it and even made a post about it. This made me feel good about my contribution to her project and definitely inspired me to give out more suggestions whenever I could!
Check out just some of my many blog comments!
Discord – I have heard about discord before but it was not something I have ever used myself. I was excited to be a part of it and be able to learn how it works and overall how beneficial it can be in so many different situations. I would often check discord for updates on class and to get a lot of great resources from my classmates!
One example of contributions through discord was during the time we were learning about coding. I loved learning about this in class and being able to explore it further. Like many of the topics we discussed in class I was inspired to do some further research on my own. During this time I found a great article about how coding is incorporated within the curriculum in England. I copied the link and shared it to discord for my classmates to also check out. I got a great response from many classmates telling me how great of a resource it was, making me very happy that I was able to contribute in this way!
