Part 5: Reflections on EC&I 831
EC&I 831 (cool video at this link) has surpassed my wildest dreams for a class. With non-traditional assignments and self-directed learning, it has opened a world to me that has allowed me to grow professionally and spawned a desire to learn more. It has made me into a 21st century teacher and learner! I have created a personal learning network that is a true professional learning community and I have opened a world far richer than any library can provide. My learning has been so great that I can’t possibly summarize it all in text. I began by trying to summarize my thoughts about the class using MindMeister. This grew into an idea to make a video to summarize my thoughts using a SmartBoard, a tool I had never used before. The quality of the video I made though was not the greatest as I worked on it alone and still have much to learn about making a quality video. I also had problems uploading it due to its length which I actually now consider a blessing as I decided not to use it and accept the fact that the 3 hours I put into making it and trying to download it taught me about Smart Boads and the importance of setting up properly when producing a video. I elected instead to make a series of Jing videos to summarize my learnings in the class. These can be viewed by visiting Stephen King's E-Portfolio.
I decided to submit an E-portfolio as my major digital project for the EC&I 831 class with Dr. Alec Couros for several reasons. It is a compilation of my learning over the last three months, as well as, a venue to house 2 of the 3 parts of my project. The first part is actually a Moodle Class, Career Ed. 7, that I created to use with a group of Grade 7 students I teach. Part 2 is a Wikispace that I have created for the benefit of the staff of La Loche Community School; it includes scheduling, important dates, and numerous links that teachers will find beneficial. It is not complete; it is a space that will continue to be developed and improved upon. The next phase of the site will be to develop teacher video tutorials using Jing for school programs like MAT (mark and attendance program). Finally, the third part of the project was to learn about WordPress for the purpose of teaching e-portfolios to High School students. I decided that to make the experience meaningful I would make my own portfolio; this WordPress blog pulls together the other parts of my major digital project and it includes aspects of almost all of my learning through the EC&I 831 class.
I hope those who visit my major digital project find at least one thing in it that they can learn from; it was my pleasure sharing my thoughts and learnings with you. And the next time I blog, it will be done entirely on the belief that I am not being evaluated and simply because I had something to share. Thanks to all who have helped me get to this point!
Posts
2 comments:
You have done a lot more in 3 months than I ever recall doing in any of the courses I took. Your materials are really well done and echo your comment about this being the best course you have ever taken. You thank Dr. Couros a number of times, and I expect that as much as he will appreciate the positive feedback, he will applaud you for the efforts you have made.
In this video, one of the things I liked was how you detailed one particular failure... the use of the Smartboard. I think a lot of people would not include failures in what is essentially a portfolio/report of growth. As educators we know the value of students learning from taking risks and having the occassional failure. Well done.
Thanks for the feedback Bob! I was disappointed with the results from the SmartBoard experiment, but I did learn a few things.
The difficult thing with working with new technology is that you often spend more time than you would like making it do what you want it to do. I did put a lot of time into pulling it all together, but I satisfied that I more than accomplished my goals for the class.
Post a Comment