Social Learning Update/ Final ECMP 355 post

Tonight was the last ECMP 355 class. It was a very good and heart warming class filled with pizza, friends, laughs, and reflections. I'm pretty excited and happy that this semester is over and summer is just around the corner. I'm also dissapointed that there won't be anymore ECMP classes because I had a really good time. I learned a lot through out this class and it improved my technology skills. It helped me understand that technology is constantly changing as well as children. Technology is constantly in everyone's lives and should be incorporated more into the classroom and in the learning process. If technology is constantly changing then so should teachers. I also had a great experience working with and learning from others in this class. This class taught me how to network, collaborate, and share ideas with others in and out of my class.

I really enjoyed blogging about this class and the tech tasks. I read a lot of people's blogs, though I didn't always comment on them, and I thought it was really interesting to hear so many opinions and ideas. I liked the fact that we all had to do the same tech tasks, because you could really see the difference between everyone's tasks and it was interesting to see all of the different interpretations and ideas. I found it to be a very good experierence to share things with people and hopefully make a positive influence on people through some of my posts. Some examples of this are: The Zombie March, Free Hugs (located on my google maps post), and The Library Voices Benifit Show. I also loved to comment on everyone's blogs (when I could), and loved reading comments left on my blog posts. My top two favorite tech tasks that I posted was my Master Card video &50 ways to tell a story post #1. I loved these tech tasks because they allowed me to express my self, and they became very personal to me. Both tech tasks ended up being two types of stories about my life and my personality.

Through out this class we also learned how to use various aspects of the internet in our classrooms. For example, Google has many cool applications that could be used, such as: Google Docs for creating forms and quizes, Google Reader for bookmarking blogs and websites, Blogger for creating blogs, Google maps, and many others. We were also shown how to create digital stories using programs like, Animoto, programs to create podcasts, You Tube, Glogger, and many more. We discussed how we could use educational videos in our class room from sites like TED, and K12 Online Conference. All of which can be found through out my blog.

As a major project we were assigned several classrooms to mentor over several weeks. I was partnered up with Colleen Glaude and Donna Fry. Colleen Glaude is a high school teacher in Florida, and Donna Fry is an online teacher based out of Ontario. I found that things went very slowly with e-mailing each other back and forth. It seemed to take forever to accomplish something. Donna wanted me to participate with her class online but the times that she was able to do that conflicted with my schedual so I wasnt able to do anything with her class. I offered to do blogs with her class and comment on their work, but she said that the online school had strict poilcies and I wasn't allowed to do that. Colleen sent me a link to a website where her and her class left two videos for me to watch and I was able to comment on those. Other than that, I wasn't able to do anything more. I think that next time a project like this is attempted, the mentors and the participating class should have a good plan before any mentoring takes place. Other than that I had an alright experience. I read a lot of other people's blogs on their mentoring projects. I especially liked Alex's blog about mentoring with a class from italy and thought her intro video was pretty cool. ( I've hear of all the bands except for "Broken Social Scene", hahaha). I think it would be really cool to mentor a class that is out of our contenent. You can find my Mentorship blog here.

I really enjoyed working on our final projects. At first, I had a really hard time thinking of what I wanted to do for my final project. I couldn't think of a way that technology could be incorporated into visual arts, which is what I plan to teach. Visual arts mainly consists of paper, clay, paint, and pencil (amoung other things). So how could I use technology? Well the idea came to me while I was working on my EAES 201 project, which was to create a canvas painting and document my progress. I started to think in terms of instructional videos and thought that making one for canvas painting would be perfect. After I created this I then thought of more ways that technology could be used in the visual arts class room. I imediately thought of art galleries, and thought "Why not create a digital art gallery?". I then created a second blog called "My Art Blog" which features 3 posts. The first post has my instructional video and discusses how teachers can create videos for their students, and how students can create videos to showcase their knowledge, talent, and even teach their classmates! The other blogs discuss how students can post their art on their blogs, evaluate each other's art, give positive feedback, and create journals about their art. I also talk about how students can create art in different media and post it on their blogs, such as: podcasts, photos, poems, journals, and videos. I even included some of my own art as examples. Overall, I loved creating this project and can't wait to incorporate this idea into my own future classroom.

My overall experience in this class is a good one. I learned many new things, and how to use different types of technology and how to incorporate that technology into the classroom. I expanded my network using programs like twitter. I also learned the importance of working together, and sharing ideas. I not only grew as a learner, but I grew as a person as well. I'm normally a quiet person, and for the most part still am, however I feel that I am becoming more comfortable with technology, with people, and with my self. I feel that over the course of my educational career I will grow into a confident and well networked teacher, and I can't wait until that happens! I met alot of people in this class and I hope and am excited to see most of them next semester in my Arts Ed. classes! I feel that this is proven through out my blog. At the beggining of this class I didn't have alot of blog posts other than what I posted for my tech tasks. I was unsure of what to say and afraid to put myself out there. After reading everyone elses blogs, and after getting to know the people in my class, I became more confident in my posts and was able to discuss different aspects of my life and about myself. If it were up to me to grade myself, then I would put more emphasis on my blog, tech tasks, and final project. These areas best show my growth and what I have learned from this course, and not my mentorship project.