Creating Connection and Contributing to Others

Signing up for EDTC300, I did not think I would build so many relationships and connections with people I have never met. This class has greatly expanded my Professional Learning Network because I was taught how to use technologies like Twitter, Slack Community, Blogging, and overall being more digitally aware! This class was a recommendation to me, by my friend Jaelyn, a former EDTC300 alumni! I am happy I took her advice and registered!

Let’s check out how I engaged with others and helped support their learnings! Building relationships is top on my list and I was finding it difficult with online learning to really make genuine connections with others through Zoom, but having the opportunity to be apart of EDTC300 and building my PLN, I know, I have a great group of fellow educators who are willing to share their ideas and help me along my journey.

Twitter

Twitter ended up being my favorite tool from this class. I wish I would of took a screenshot of my followers at the start of January and now! I cannot believe how much my Personal Learning Network has grown from one app. Twitter is great, it really can help you build relationships and share teaching techniques with its easy accessibility to resources, professional development, and everything in-between. My favorite thing about Twitter so far is #Saskedchat, attending that first one was overwhelming, but it gave me access to follow educators not only in Saskatchewan, but across Canada (and maybe further I’d have to look into that more). I joined a few more #Saskedchats this semester and during one of them, it was “open mic night” I asked a questions and had some great responses I will share! I was also able to share resources with my EDTC300 peers and see what resources they thought were meaningful to share with me. Engaging with others on twitter was an awesome use of technology and I can picture myself as an educator using Twitter in my future classroom check out my blog post about it!

Slack Community

Slack, was a great tool for interaction among our class. You asked a question and within minutes you had an answer. That was amazing! There were some outstanding resources being created and shared on Slack as well. Although, I enjoyed reading what others contributed I feel like I personally “slacked” in this aspect of the course. Not because I wanted to, but because by the time I looked at Slack, people already replied to the questions or I was too late and someone contributed what I would have said. I did get a few chances though. Here they are:

Blogging

Blogging, the hub to our #EDTC300 class. Each week we were tasked with a #learningproject post and sometimes we were challenged to dive deeper and asked to respond to a digital literacy, coding, cyber bullying and a few other topics to enhance our critical thinking and share our ideas with one another. My goal was to respond to 3 or more peers a week and reply to all that commented on my posts. As April and finals have all caught up to me I found I have struggled to keep up with this task at the end of the semester, but I have still tried my best to engage and give commentary where I can. I liked the blogging aspect because we were challenged to use new technologies and I definitely took advantage of this in my own posts with the use of Animoto, Canva, Loom, Zoom and checked out more, but did not end up using like Flipgrid, Quizzes, and Kahoot. Here is how I have contributed to my peers blogs over the semester.

Reflection

Looking back on this semester and creating this post makes me incredibly proud of all the technologies I tried for the first time and will continue using throughout my life and teaching career. Reading my interactions with my peers and seeing their growth through their #learningprojects sums up how amazing this class was. our blogs, Twitter, Slack Community and Wednesday night Zoom’s really built a connection between us. We were not in person, but yet we still were able to form a digital bond. I think that was obvious when we played Katia’s Kahoot and the personal questions that were asked were almost all getting 100% correct.

Thank you, EDTC300, for a great semester of learning and growing. Keep up the Tweets, I will continue to follow your educational journey.

Miss Blenkin