First of all, I want to congratulate all of us for successfully achieving our goal. Can you believe this chapter of our lives is coming to a close?I have learned so much about myself as a learner through this process. I have learned that I can push myself pretty hard and remain standing. I can be faced with a challenge and persevere. I have learned how our small cohort has different learning styles, and I realize more clearly now that my students have different learning styles also. Becoming a student again has really opened my eyes as to how my students view me and the workload. In addition, I have learned a lot about digital citizenship, purposeful websites, online games, online activities, different online organization tools, media tools and which ones work the best for me and which do not. After I wrap up my assignments for my Master's degree this summer, I am looking forward to creating DC/SEL/BEST lesson plan templates for each grade level at my school site. I have already reviewed my research and research findings with my principal and she is on board to move forward with the lessons for all grade levels, K-5. This makes me very happy! Once the exhaustion is done and I have more time again, I plan on going back to school to get my Administrative Credential. If one day I do decide to do something different and outside of the classroom, I need this credential to move forward. Therefore, I will continue to push myself and grow some more!
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What is your biggest takeaway from the 703 class? What’s been your favorite part of the class? Where did you struggle and what did you do to push through your struggle? How do your skills in transliteracy relate to the TPACK model? Biggest takeaway My biggest takeaway from this class is how I persevered to get A LOT of work done in a very short amount of time. I will never forget how overwhelmed and intimated I felt after looking at the long list of all of the necessary projects to complete this term. However, as the term is coming to a close, I can feel a great sense of accomplishment. I still have a bit to do but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Favorite part of class As always, my favorite part of class is investigating new ideas, seeing what my peers have created and our discussions. I have really gotten to know most of my colleagues pretty well and I feel we have a created a "Master's BOND". The discussions stimulate my brain so much that I can't turn my brain off to go to bed for at least an hour after class. I just keep processing it all because it is exciting to me. I know we are all ready to receive our degree but I will truly miss my Tuesday and Thursday school dates. It has been a nice way to spend my evening. My struggles What wasn't a struggle for me? That is really the question. However, if I really had to pick one task, it would be the WeVideo. I had the most obstacles and the greatest block from this task. I had a difficult time from the beginning to the end. Now that it is finishing up though, I have to say it is probably one of my most rewarding challenges. TPACK All of the courses throughout Touro's Innovative Learning Master's degree has taught me more about Transliteracy than I thought I would ever know. It has been great because I am able to include my new tech knowledge into my pedagogy of teaching. I am also able to help family and friends with so much more technology than I was before. In addition, I believe this was the best time to get my Master's because we were all forced to learn how to teach differently, with the use of technology and Zoom, due to Covid. So, my content knowledge also shifted. I learned how to create slides, use gaming for educational purposes, use ZOOM, CLEVER, and so much more. Next year, with the students coming back into the classroom, I am going to take the TPACK model and continue it without the virtual learning. How are you doing with making progress? Where do you need to manage your time and energy resources? How will you complete everything by the end of class? What organizational strategies are you using to get things done on time? How can you translate those strategies to your students in the classroom? Where do they struggle with time or resource management? What lessons might you need to develop to help them cope with classroom assignments:
1. Logo 2. Infographic 3. Mini-documentary 4. Executive Summary 5. Capstone Poster Progress? To be honest, I feel very overwhelmed because having an impacted semester in Semester 3 is A LOT of work. I am working on my webpage, which is quite detailed, but I am also working on my mini-documentary and executive summary at the same time. Both of these classes this semester work together for the greater good of completing the program. So, if I work too long on my webpage and not enough time on my mini-documentary (because frankly making a movie is outside my comfort zone) I get behind in one class but ahead in the other. I need to manage my time in this class, EDUC 703. This class pushes me to be better, to be challenged and try new things. I appreciate being pushed outside my comfort zone but due to the fact that we are so close to the finish line, I tend to do what is in my comfort zone first and push back what I find resistance to. Completion? I plan on spending this upcoming week working on completing my projects. I am a couple webpages away from finishing my website (with the exception of adding a few items from this class). I have completed the first draft of my executive summary, my logo, and I have filmed my documentary questions for my documentary. I need to finish my documentary, and begin working on my poster. These are two HUGE projects, and I am intimated by them. I know I can do it but I need to get in the proper mindset to get me through it. Strategies? My strategy thus far has been to get items accomplished that are within my comfort zone. The items, as mention above, are still waiting for completion because I am not as familiar with how to get them accomplished. However, all items need to be completed and they need to be done in a timely fashion for school. Therefore, I will spend tomorrow working on my documentary. I will try to begin my poster tomorrow afternoon or Tuesday before class. Translate to students? I live and teach by checklists. I try to teach my students to create a checklist and work on what they know first. This creates a feeling of accomplishment for them and gives them confidence to do items that they are not as comfortable with after they have completed what they know how to do. It also provides a sense of relief because they know they have items finished so they can be prepared for class discussions. Future preparation for students? I work with third grade students. They are between 8 and 10 years old. I provide the "whole picture" approach but then break up the large, overwhelming lesson into smaller bits and pieces. This allows them to know what I expect by the end of the project but hopefully eliminates a little of the scare factor. In summary, I am very proud of myself for working so hard this past year. It has been an interesting year, to say the least, but we are all getting through it with and will be better professionals because of it. As stressed as I happen to get, I have learned a lot and pushed myself beyond what I thought was possible. Thank you all for being a part of my learning and my journey. How was it to be in front of the camera? Where was it challenging? Honesty...it wasn't hard to be in front of the camera but it was EXTREMELY frustrating filming. I spent hours writing my script and preparing to video. First, I made sure I was presentable. Second, I finally found a good place in my home to film. I believe the place I chose was a good choice because it had the best lighting in my home with two nearby large windows, and I had an attractive but not fussy background. Finally, I have so much to say to answer my interview questions but I couldn't memorize the material. Therefore, I try to look at the camera as much as possible but my eyes bounce around from reading and then focusing back to the camera. I tried to use different angles to help but you can still see my bouncing eyes. Where can you infuse a growth mindset in this project? How often do you personally do the projects that you ask your students to do? Where are you in your learning pit experience right now? In all reality I feel like I am currently in the learning pit. One of the reasons for feeling this way is I am always on time completing my homework and blogs. Due to the fact that I was on vacation this past week and our homework included filming with all of the restrictions like sound, space, background, angles etc...I was unable to do any of it while on vacation. Therefore, I am frantically and stressfully trying to get it done today. With all of my struggles, I feel very overwhelmed and frustrated. I am trying to think of how my students feel when they get to this stress level. What would I tell them? I would probably tell them to take a breath and count backwards from 10 to 0. I would tell them to get up and walk away from the problem for awhile or to do something else for the time being. I would also use some growth mindset talk. I would say, "Mistakes are proof you are trying", "Don't give up" and "Use the power of YET". Therefore, I am going to take my own advice. I have filmed what I need but I know it isn't the quality I want from myself. So, I am going to use what I have for this evening and rethink how I am going to get what I want from my documentary. After talking it over with my son, I think I am going to write down the questions and speak without the structure of my poster-boards. Hopefully this will make it film more as a documentary and interview and less like a speech. Blog for the week: Give us an honest appraisal of your journey around trying to produce your Capstone Project. What problems have you encountered? How will you solve them? What aha’s have you encountered as you watch mini-documentaries and past capstone videos? How are they different? Think about who you are creating the mini-documentary for? What essential points will be most important to them and how will you address them in your storytelling?
In all honesty, I am pretty overwhelmed, nervous and worried that I may not be able to pull this off in time. Unfortunately, our Touro cohort has a couple obstacles in our way that are unique to our group. First, we have been teaching virtually for most of this past year, due to COVID. Second, we are finishing our Capstone Project during the summer. I am nervous that I don't have the right pictures or enough pictures to create my documentary. So far in my journey, I have created my logo...well I have created two logos because the first one needed improvements. I have also created 2-3 infographics. Again, this was due to the first one being too wordy and not visually stimulating. I have gathered my photos for my documentary and I have them in a google doc. My next steps are to put my pictures in order to begin telling my story. I would also like to somehow get a video clip of one or two of the digital citizenship lessons from CommonSense.org. I think their videos were well done and will help to show my story. Other than re-doing some of my work, I have had a couple other obstacles. I have a common last name and therefore faced a few struggles while I was setting up my Weebly website. Thankfully Marie understood the problem and was able to add K to the front of my last name to isolate my account from the other student who shares my last name. In addition, I had a difficult time navigating Weebly. I don't find it user friendly so it is taking me a little longer than normal to get my information sorted on the assigned pages. It may take me a little longer but I WILL get there. I enjoyed watching the documentaries this week. I took it upon myself to watch a few additional ones to really see some differences. I could see the difference between the older cohorts versus the newer ones. Actually watching the documentaries gave me a little relief because I saw how different they were from each other. Some students used a lot of stock pictures (which may be what I need to do as well), some students talked a lot and used fewer images, and some students talked a little and used the pictures to tell the story for them. I would like to find the balance. I am thinking that I will have my daughter help me film. I also may need to photograph or video her to add to a few of my pictures. I would like to get an image or video of her on the laptop listening to a digital citizenship lesson. While I am creating this documentary for teachers, counselors and administrators, I believe students may find it useful before beginning a digital citizenship lesson. It will give them a good understanding of the expectations. Write a blog review of the logo making software you chose and what hurdles you encountered and your overall experience. When I first heard that we would be creating our own logo for our capstone, I panicked a bit because I am not super creative. So, I took a deep breathe and drew an image that I thought captured my research project. It was much less daunting for me to draw it free hand than to go right to the digital version. After I had a good idea of what I wanted I explored google images for pictures that I could add my text to. I had to make sure the images were transparent and most were not. This is how I ended up with this particular laptop. I especially liked the blue screen on it. The blue screen got me thinking about my color palette. I immediately did red and white as contrasting colors. Afterwards, I realized it is a very patriotic logo but that worked well for me because my research is regarding citizenship....digital citizenship. I felt it was appropriate and I wanted the SEL in red for love and kindness. Once I had my image, I added it to the google draw page. In addition, I ventured into some different webpages like logomaker.com and logmakr.com. I soon realized that they were both the same website. I explored around for a bit and copied a few more images that it created and I liked. I couldn't get the feel for the new images from logomaker so I stuck with the one I created on my own. My only concern is the use of the laptop because I know many are using them in our current virtual world but it covers the "digital" part of "digital citizenship" for me so I am going to go with it. Blog about the following ideas:
1) How does transliteracy change your current thoughts on the content you deliver? 2) How do you see the incorporation of transliteracy teaching methods increasing student inclusion and engagement? 3) How does sketchnoting fall into the transliteracy category and how was it for you to process information in this way? How might you use this in the classroom? Transliteracy, curriculum delivery and teaching methods: Since COVID, teaching has transformed drastically. Teachers that refused to use technology were forced to learn how to capitalize on it in order to make teaching possible. Transliteracy, while it was very much so recognized by some, has now become more recognized throughout the teaching field. Thinking about next year and the fact that we will likely be back into the classroom, my hope is for teachers to consider to continue to use transliteracy with their curriculum and the delivery of their curriculum. I know for me, I have been taking note of what has worked really well this year and what I could improve upon. We are constantly reflecting and growing as educators. I know that I will continue to use Google Slides to present my lessons. They are a great visual and are also wonderful for students who are absent. They can get a good idea of what they missed that day and what they need to do to catch up. With that being said, I would also like to use Google Classroom for organization of assignments, and student communication. I hope we can continue with Clever and the many app's the district paid for this year. I have especially enjoyed and my students have benefitted from EdPuzzle, GimKit, FlipGrid, Quill, NitroType, Prodigy and several others. These "games" have helped my students be more engaged to learn multiplication, typing, math, grammar, conventions, and so much more. I have used FlipGrid primarily for fluency assessments. It has been wonderful. All of my students enjoy it. It has been inclusive especially because all students have their own device (again a positive from COVID). It also allows students to learn at their own pace and turn in their work/assignments when they are able to get them complete. Sketchnoting: I am not going to lie...when sketchnoting was first presented to us in class, I was a bit worried. I am not an artist, and I have to dig deep into my creative side to produce something worth turning in. However, I really enjoyed the process. I allowed myself to have fun but to be precise. I wanted to keep it simple and clean. I didn't want to go overboard and crowd the message. Therefore, I only added the main and relevant events. As for my images, well...I am not an artist. However, I think they are legible and understandable. After completing this assignment for myself, I would like to use sketchnoting in the classroom. What first comes to mind is comprehension. Students could sketchnote the parts of a story, they could sketchnote a math process, or a science experiment. You can pretty much sketchnote any "process" because they all have details that can be drawn. Sketchnoting is another positive form of tranliteracy. My hope and personal goal is to take all of this new information and pass it along to teachers who have not tried all of these new techniques. All students should benefit from transiteracy. |
Photos used under Creative Commons from wuestenigel, wuestenigel