Sunday, November 20, 2011

Giving Thanks for your Learning

If Franny only had thumbs, she could hold her own books!
I just wanted to remind everyone that you will be completing your assignment this week virtually.  After last week's small class discussion and my realization that your learning doesn't require the formal boundary of a classroom, I feel confident that you will be able to complete the majority if your work on your own.  As such I just want to remind you of the remaining expectations for the course:

  • Cultivating your PLNs: This is a weekly if not daily responsibility.  You should be reading, tweeting, bookmarking, sharing, and writing.  I really think the writing is the biggest sign that you are processing your learning.  I would definitely like to see more original posts, either as reflections on your reading, learning, participation in educational chats, or some other form of learning that happens outside of this class (If you are not averaging one original post per week, you should be).  
  • Classroom visitations:  If you have not yet completed your classroom visits, I can help schedule a visit to one of the Juvenile Court and Community Schools (JCCS) classrooms.  If we do it on the week of the 28th, I might be able to take a small group to a few sites to see how, even in at risk programs, technology can play a big part in learning.  I know there are already a few observations already posted on the blog. . .Thanks.
  • Past blog assignments:  If you haven't completed some of the assigned blog reflections (Disrupting Class, your student-centric school, a reflection on an EC & I 831 class, etc.) please have those completed soon
  • Absences:  if you missed any classes, you can make up for it by completing a reflection on a second class from the EC & I course (I would highly recommend the Intro to Connected Learning).  If you are struggling to find something to write about on your blog, this is also a good alternative!
  • Digital Reflection Project: this is definitely not the same assignment that I thought it would be in the beginning of class.  This final project will basically be a summary of the learning in this course and how you might see learning differently in the future.  As the medium of this course has been technology, I expect that technology is a large component of your project.  Also, as part of the class discussion last week, we/I decided that the projects will be recorded using Jing or another screen recorder and placed on your blogs.  In this way, the entire content of your course will be on your blog, which will serve as a great future artifact of your learning.  The entire class on November 28 will be dedicated to discussing and working with some screen capture tools you can use as well as how to record & narrate a Prezi, a website, or whatever will be the medium of your digital reflection project.  We will also discuss how you will present these to the group!
  • Dec 5 Teacher Panel:  We will have a panel of tech using teachers to discuss their use of technology and how they see it supporting student learning.  I am also interested in how they arrange their environments to support learning.  If you have a teacher you would like to invite, please contact me!
  • Final reflection:  this will be self-assessment of your success in this class.  We will talk about it on the 28th.

I hope this helps you all with your planning for the rest of the semester.  Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or if you need any support.

Leave a comment noting that you have read and understand what you need to do. . .also if you have a question, perhaps the community could help answer it!

10 comments:

  1. Just wanted to clarify.. no class tomorrow?? (Monday 11/21)

    Also, I'm interested in visiting a few of the JCCS classrooms. I would just need to know what date so that I can inform my work that I will be out! (Any day besides Tuesday, during the week works for me!)

    Also, I would really appreciate the help on recording and narrating a Prezi (or a PowerPoint) since I had so many issues when I did this for a group project! (I was successful in recording my part of the PowerPoint and was able to share it through DropBox, but when the last group member inputted their slides, somehow all my voice-overs were lost and they had troubles recovering files!)

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  2. Annie,
    We will not be meeting physically today! However, as you can tell by the blog post, you still have plenty to do for class.
    We can schedule our JCCS visit when we hear from the rest of the class. . .so Tuesday is out!
    We will definitely take time on the 28th to work with all technical aspects of screencasting. You will be a screencasting expert after class ;-)

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  3. I got it! :) Just to remind you, I will not be in class on Monday Nov. 28th because I will still be in Florida. If I have any questions before the December 5th class, I will post them!

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  4. Oh and for the tech teacher panel, I think it would be cool to see Jen Roberts' presentation that she did for the technology day at USD a few months ago (that I had no idea was a technology workshop, otherwise I would have attended!!) or even hear how she incorporates technology in her classroom at Point Loma.. I know that in our methods class, she gave us a few examples, but it would be great to see/hear about more!

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  5. I guess my post didn't want to post last night, so here it is again...

    I got an email about the Fall Kick-off presentations (the one I was talking about in my above post) are posted on the SOLES website. Both the presenters PowerPoint as well as a video of their presentation can be found here:

    http://www.sandiego.edu/soles/programs/learning_and_teaching/dlt_kick_off.php

    I tried to watch Jen's presentation, but it took forever to load, so I'll try again later. The Keynote speakers as well as the Technology Showcase speakers all have interesting topics that would be beneficial for us in this class! Hope everyone checks it out! I'm gonna blog about a few of them if they ever load for me!!

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  6. p.s. I'm definitely interested in a JCCS visit.

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  7. Read and Understood. See you tonight.

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