This is my final Networking Learning post and my main focus of this blog post will be to share with you, my readers, how I have contributed to the learning of others. Throughout my EDTC 300 journey, I have learnt a lot and networked with many people that I did not know at the beginning. I began this experience without a Twitter Account, not knowing what Slack or Zoom was and I had not blogged in over a year. I have used all of the below medias to network with other people in EDTC 300, EDTC 400, other classmates and other educators from around the world. I never realised how many networking doors could be opened by using these medias, especially Twitter. I personally have grown and learnt a lot throughout this class. Many of the medias or information I learnt will continue to be used in my life. TWITTER (@MissHMercier) Twitter has been the main source of my networking, there are many educators on Twitter that I was able to reach out to. I did not want a Twitter account, I had successfully managed to avoid Twitter for 21 years of my life until this class. My mindset was that I would do what I needed to do on Twitter and then at the end of the class, I would delete my account. I am happy to report that I will not be deleting my account. I will most likely not be as active as I found it hard to Tweet about multiple things a day, but I will still use it at my own level and continue to network wherever possible. I contributed to the learning of others by posting on Twitter - allowing people to see my thoughts, beliefs and interests as I tweeted and retweeted things that I found interesting an important. This allowed me to connect with classmates who shared similar interests and to put myself out there as an educator for other educators to see.
I worked as an EA substitute during this semester so I would share experiences or resources I found while in the classrooms I worked in - I was mainly in Elementary School classrooms so although these resources did not directly relate to my High School experience, I posted them because I knew that many of my followers were elementary and could make good use of these ideas. I shared interesting topics or information from other classes I was taking in order to share the knowledge that I thought was important. It also allowed to inform followers who were not in that class, on what I was learning about in other classes. This also allowed me to connect with classmates from these classes and even some of my professors at some points. I shared resources that I came across throughout the semester as well in order to give my other peers these ideas for those who, like me, will be entering our careers in the fall or for those that are still in classes and might be entering internship in the next little bit. I also tried to share English related things such as books that reflect diversity that maybe I can or my fellow English majors can teach in our classrooms one day.
While using Twitter, I tried my best to tweet about things that I cared about or had an interest in, but also things that I knew or hoped others could relate to or talk about. I asked questions, shared things I found, retweeted, linked my blog and just shared random pieces of knowledge with my classmates, followers and anyone else who happened to see my posts. Also on Twitter, I did my best to comment on others' posts and share my opinions with them. We learn best through each other, so everytime I commented on someone else's post or they commented on mine, we learned from one another and our horizons were slightly broadened by listening to opinions and ideas that may be different from our own. Commenting on others' posts and them commenting on mine also created a space for support which is a huge part of creating a strong network. Sharing little things like how we all study differently and then sharing what works best for me helps create that network. Sometimes small little ideas such as how we study can impact our network: it's like a small way of helping each other out. Same with the second example, little things like sharing advice that I would have given to myself in my first year. This grows my network and helps others learn because maybe if they see that tweet, they might take my advice or maybe its something they can relate to as well. As you can see from the above examples, I have connected with lots of people - mainly people from class, but I created a positive and supportive relationship with other people as well including my mentor, Jayden and people such as Andrew who is not even from Canada. It amazes me how far a tweet can go and something as simple and me tweeting about the struggle of studying for a test can be found by someone from another country and they can comment back and wish me a good luck! My network has grown and it is full of rich knowledge and tons of support from all of those around me. Lastly with Twitter is Twitter Chats. To be completely honest, I was not a huge fan of Twitter chats. I loved how fast it was to make connections with people from across the globe, but I found it to be extremely overwhelming and hard to keep track of everything that is happening so fast and all at once. The other downside was that many of the chats that interested me happened on nights when I had night classes so participating was sometimes harder. My first one was the CTE Chat which I found overwhelming, but also quite enlightening.
BLOG: Many of my peers have taken the time to come visit my blog and have left me kind and encouraging comments. I have done the same for them as well. Our EDTC class has created a supportive network by the amount of support and words of kindness that we have provided each other. We have all been doing amazing things in our Learning Project and the community and network we have created by watching each other learn and grow has been amazing. When my peers would comment on my blog, I would try to reply if I felt it was needed. It took me a little while to figure it out how to comment back, but eventually did. It helps to strengthen the network when it becomes more of a conversation between me and my readers which is why I tried to respond once in a while. SLACK COMMUNITY: Our Slack Community was a very supportive and helpful. I did not participate as much as I would have liked to, but many of the questions being asked were things that I had no idea how to solve or was trying to figure out myself. Whenever I could answer something, I got to it right away and gave my two cents. It was an awesome resource to have though in order to reach out to my network for anything I needed. COLLABORATIONS AND CREATIONS: Throughout the semester, I had the privilege of collaborating with some of my peers a little closer due to some of the assignments and activities that were asked of us. It was nice to get to work with my peers especially in an online class because I expected it to be a class with less interaction. I was happily proved wrong when I spent lots of time talking to my peers in online discussion and a few in person to collaborate on projects. Creation wise, I was able to create a few artefacts for my learning project which would hopefully help any of my peers or people in my network who want to learn how to sew. I created a how-to video where i explain and show how I sewed parts of my blanket together. I also created a step by step process with pictures in case anyone else ever wanted to try it. Both of these creations have been linked in my learning project posts, but I will share them here again with you. I have learnt so much throughout this class and did not know how important creating and having a learning network is. I have met so many new people and many of them I follow on Twitter now so we can stay up to date on each others' lives. I have created friendships with many of my classmates and have bonded over digital citizenship with them! I thought I knew a lot about technology, but this class really opened my eyes. I did my best to contribute to my peers' learning by creating tweets and blog posts and commenting back to them. I collaborated and created a few sewing resources in hopes of helping others in my network or drawing more people into my network. Having a strong and supportive network has been helpful throughout this journey and I look forward to working with and relying on each other in the years to come. Thanks for the great experience in EDTC 300.
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We were asked to share a summary of learning video with the class. Pretty much, just a 6 to 8 minute video on what we have gained and learned from this class. Erinn and I worked together for this and made the video below. We have learnt so much: awesome resources to use in the classroom, how to tweet and participate in Twitter chats, how to help our students identify fake news or how to be sake online and so much more. We have covered so much in such little time! lease do not judge us too harshly on how cringy this may be. Thanks for watching! I'm just going to say it.... I did not enjoy coding. I first tried to make my own, struggled for an hour and then gave up. I decided maybe playing a game would be easier which it was, but still caused some struggles. I decided to play The Grinch: Saving Christmas with Code from Hour of Code because I LOVE the Grinch. I eventually got the hang of it, but I did not enjoy doing it as I found no interest in doing it. However, I did learn a newfound appreciation for those that do code and create games as it is not an easy task. I wish I would have liked it more, but as we all know, everyone has different interests and passions. Honestly, I don't think I will ever use this in the classroom as I did not find it beneficial. I can understand how for younger kids, it might help with their cognitive abilities, but in a High School English classroom, I don't see its value. With that said, I've only had a few hours of coding experience, so if you have any advice or ideas as to where this would fit, I am more than happy to hear you out! I would not go as far to say it is not important as I believe that all students learn a different way and this might be the way some learn best which is great. But will I promote this or assign this in my own class? Most likely, no. I started to feel more comfortable with it once I practised for a few lessons, but I found it tedious and grew tired throughout the experience. Overall, I am glad that I tried it and I am proud that I was able to figure it out after a few tries. I'm impressed by those that do this regularly as it is not an easy skill to master. Although, coding was not for me, I do see some benefit for other students! Here is my screencast video if you want to take a look at how I did: |
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