Learning Experiences:
As this course comes to a close and I reflect on my time in the course, there are many things that I have learned. This class has taught me so much more than just technology in the classroom. In attempts to meet the ISTE standards, I feel as if we accomplished these as best as we could in an asynchronous class over a shorted amount of time. I learned a lot about myself in this class in attempt to meet these standards as well. For starters I learned about the importance of communication as a whole amongst group members. This is my first experience with a class where the entire bulk of the course was based around asynchronous group work. This experience presented challenges but also presented several learning experiences as well. I am very pleased with the group I was placed in and felt as if we all worked very diligently together. Our projects were very successful and I learned some important skills for each of my group members that will carry me well into my future classrooms. There were several technological tools that were used throughout the course. Some that I had used before, and some that I had never even heard of. Below I will reflect on each weeks task and reflect on the use of the specific tools during that week: Week 1: During this first week, we established ourselves by creating our Weebly blog sites and creating our first blog post. This was the first interaction I had had with Weebly, however, I had created websites before in the past so I found this site to be fairly user-friendly, solely due to my previous experiences with other website making sources. In hindsight, I do not see myself using a personal blog site such as this in my classroom, as it would be a little difficult to navigate with my content area. However, I enjoyed creating blogs each week and learning how to navigate Weebly. Week 2: Throughout Week 2, we were still establishing ourselves in our blog posts and getting used to navigating Weebly. We reflected on chapters 1-3 through a blog post on our Weebly account. Although these were individual posts, this was the first week we had to collaborate with our groups as we discussed who would answer each question. This group communication would come into play throughout the entire course. Week 3: Week 3 was very similar to Week 2. Our task was to reflect on chapters 4-6 in a blog post. We again used group collaboration to determine who would answer which questions. In my classroom, I plan to utilize discussion posts as a form of reflection. Using Weebly for this, was a great form an allowed for easy commenting. Week 4: Week 4 was when things began to change. This week was when we created our first group project, Project 1: Creating Your Ideal 21st Century Classroom. For this project, we were asked to created an ideal classroom for the 21st century utilizing technology, utilizing a grant that we were hypothetically asking to receive. Throughout this project, there were several aspects that we needed to collaborate on as a group. We had a group message as well as a google sheet that we used for collaboration and each of us. We used Google sheets and Google documents for this specific project. These are both platforms that I have used and will continue to use in my classroom as a vital resource. Week 5: Week 5 consisted of our group collaborating on Projects 2, 3, 4, and 5. Project 2 was a lesson plan that we would use in our hypothetical classroom, Project 3 was a survey that would be given to the class asking about technological backgrounds, project 4 was a google document and google slide presentation that would be use in cohesion with the lesson plan to teach the students, and project 5 was a podcast that was done individually to teach the students. We decided to create a topic that could be applicable to all of our subject areas. Our lesson was on how to create a MLA formatted paper and each of these projects were centralized around this lesson. For projects 2-4 we split these up individually amongst the groups so my specific job was to created the Google Slide attached to project 4. I really enjoy using Google Slides and I will continue to utilize this source in my class in the future. As for the podcast, I personally used the voice memos feature on my computer to record. I had never created a podcast before so this was a new experience for me. I enjoyed this process, however this is probably not a function I will utilize in the future. Week 6: Week 6 consisted of project 6-8. This week was a very enjoyable week for me as, this utilized features I was very familiar with. With distance learning being very prominent this past year, we had to utilize video lectures as a form of teaching several times. I was very familiar with filming videos through Zoom and even editing them in Edpuzzle. This was a refreshing experience as it was something that I was already very comfortable doing. I will continue to utilize this as a form of presenting information to my students as well. Week 7: Week 7 was packed full for technological resources. All of the technological resources that we used throughout this week, I had never used before. We began by creating a Quizizz for our students coinciding with our MLA format lesson plan. I personally had never used this plat form before so this was a very enjoyable experience. I will continue to use this as a resource in the future for my student, as I think this will be a resource they will enjoy. Next we created a rubric for our students paper using the platform, Rubistar. I had never heard of this before but it was very convenient when it came to creating the rubric. As a group we collaborated on using the platforms Padlet and ThingLink. These are both a great source for presenting information to students as reenforcement or remediation. I aim to be able to utilize both of these platforms throughout the next school year. Week 8: In our last week of projects, we collaborated on creating a group website for our lesson using the Google Sites platform. I did not know that this was a platform that Google offered but I found it to be very helpful and user-friendly. My group enjoyed collaboratively making this. Similar to Weebly, though, I do not see myself using this in my class particularly because of how it could relate to my content area but it was great to be able to learn and understand how this platform works. These projects taught me a lot about myself as a person as well as a teacher. I learned a lot about my role in a group but also about my role form a technology standpoint. Throughout this experience, I would say that my greatest weakness was overall communication with my group. The summers are ironically an extremely busy time for me and I do not have much time to be on my phone throughout the day. I was not expecting when I started this class for it to be so centered around group work, so I lacked on the communication aspect simply due to my lack in time over the summers. I would say that my biggest strength was completing tasks that were asked of me. I may not have been able to respond much in our group messages throughout the day but I was able to get anything done that was needed of me. In conclusion, I am very grateful for this class and how much I gained from it. The lessons I have learned throughout this class will carry me well into my career as an educator.
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About AuthorMy name is Michaelah Martin and I am a Human Anatomy and Physiology teacher in the Jackson Metro area. I love teaching, dancing, and DIY projects! Hope you enjoy my blog! BlogrollVictoria Parker
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