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!