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Educational Technology - Library Science

I created this blog to reflect on my classes I will be taking as I work toward my Master's of Education in Educational Technology - Library Science.

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

                                     Linus Pauling

(from Mishra & Koehler, Keynote, 2008)

Final Reflection ETEC 527

ETEC 527 Web 2.0 was a must take class. I learned so much in this class about Web 2.0 tools for the 21st Century skills for teaching students new technology for learning. I was introduced to digital platforms, like PearDeck, Nearpod, Padlet, etc. that are interactive for students. The more students use these digital platforms the more they will become familiar with them and will excel in reading, writing, collaborating, and much more.There are many opportunities for teachers to implement these tools in their everyday teaching, but to be successful, they need the training.

My plan is to go back and master one platform at a time so that I can go back and teach it to my students and teachers. With these skills, teachers will be able to create a classroom environment that will be engaging, student-minded, meaningful, and creative. 

Thank you Doc B for all the tips and advice in this class.

Vanity 2

Vanity 2

For my Vanity 2 search I came across an artist named Julie Davis. She not only painted, but she published some books with her paintings in them. Facebook also came up again, but this time it not only had my regular Facebook (with my maiden name added) , but it had my Art Facebook page as well. I seem to be finding more Julie Davis’ during this search, but not really a lot of me. When I searched for pictures of me these are some I came across. None are me. 

Thank goodness! LOL

I then came across LocatePeople.org which is a Public Records website. I was the only “Julie Davis” in the city I live in. Some of the information was not accurate, which is weird that it would be incorrect since it is Public Records.

Again, I searched my name with just my maiden name and with my married and maiden name together, but nothing new came up with that search. So nothing really different came up on my second Vanity search. I even tried different search engines like Foxfire (which is a part of Google) and DuckDuckGo, but the same thing from Google showed up.

Adventures in HyperDoc World

This week we explored the world of HyperDocs and I really enjoyed it! I had already heard about HyperDocs during a PD training, but never really had the time to learn, explore and apply it to my lessons. I would love to implement these into my lessons but, I'm an Art teacher so I did not find as many examples I would have liked too. I did think about using a history template and using it for a biography or Art History lesson. There is a lot of information out there and may be a little overwhelming, but I will continue to explore all of the avenues and maybe watch a few YouTube tutorials (I'm a very visual learner). Gotta wrap my brain around it lol

Some of the websites or blogs I explored had plenty of information, templates, and HyperDocs. For example Teach it with Tech had some great guidelines to be sure and use when creating your HyperDoc. This ensures the students will stay engage in the lessons you create. The guidelines are below:

These guidelines came from the Teach it with Tech link above.

Another good site is  SFUSD . Diana Mancuso has a very helpful visual of what a HypeDoc is and what it is not. See below:

Another good one is Ditch That Textbook which has several HyperDoc templates. While I was exploring his website, I came across his podcast. I subscribed to it so that I could continue learning of all the possibilities of implementing HyperDocs and other Google ideas.

I guess the main one I received the most information from were the HyperDocs website with gurus Lisa Highfill, Sarah Landis, and Kelly Hilton. There may be more, but these are the ones I could find on the website. So much helpful information on this website.

A couple of  tools I explored to help create HyperDocs is Smore and Wakelet. 

I like that Smore is a free platform for creating newsletters, interactive assignments and you can sign in anywhere and start where you left off. It is simple to interact with so younger student will fill comfortable using it. 

Wakelet is a free platform as well. I didn't create anything with it, but went through it to see what it had to offer. I will definitely have to watch some videos to learn how to use it to it's full extent. I did notice that Wakelet seems a little bit like Padlet in the way it is laid out. 

While all of this was great information and helpful ways to engage student learning. It was a little overwhelming. When I have a break from college and work, I will have to explore into all the avenues of these platforms.

I did find one Art HyperDoc assignment which is the subject I teach. This is the link to explore it. I thought it was pretty cool. 

YouTube Adventure ETEC 527

This week I explored YouTube a little further. I use YouTube all the time, but don’t actually explore deep into it. I have recorded art lessons, but have never uploaded anything to YouTube until taking my master’s classes. I thought it would be difficult, but it was rather surprisingly simple. I should upload my art lessons onto YouTube for quicker access. I use YouTube everyday to watch church sermons, news, DIY, how to videos, and art videos. I use art videos in many of my art lessons so the videos have been easy to link to my Google Slide.

For my assignment this week, I had to create a YouTube channel and add some playlists. These playlists included videos on using Twitter and Twitter tools, teaching and learning with technology, videos that speak to the use of Web 2.0 tools for learning, videos related to what we teach, and a playlist of our choice. When I did my search, I had to make sure the videos were at least within the last 5 years or sooner because programs change all the time. Also, when I searched videos for the subject I teach (elementary Art) when I would go to save to my playlist, it said “this action is turned off for content made for kids” yet you can share the link (don’t really understand why that is). That was very frustrating because I will now need to copy and paste the link to a Google slide, but I would rather just be able to go to YouTube, look at my playlist, click on it and click play. This seems to have been around for about 6 months to a year.

I do love the playlists because I don’t have to try and remember the name of the video or search for it, I can just get my playlist and find it quickly. Also, I found that it was easy to share a YouTube video onto Twitter. I am sure there are some other perks I missed, but I will continue searching and looking for new things to do with YouTube. Hmmm I probably could find a video about that on YouTube!!! :)

Adventure -Twitter Reflection ETEC 527

This week, I am exploring Twitter a little more. I have an older account, but have not used it for a few years. I think the last time I used it was for a book read for Prof. Dev. GT update. I guess the same concept for Blackboard discussion, but for Twitter, I felt there were two many steps to find the current questions we were supposed to answer. Plus, it had limited characters so if my answer was longer, I was out of luck or had to do a reply to finish. Maybe that's why they did it so they wouldn’t have to read long answers lol. The district also likes us to use hashtags and tweet when we have our PD learning at the beginning of the year as well as our convocation. Sometimes they have a contest to the teacher that tweets and hashtags the most during those three days.

I think this could be beneficial for students in high school to possibly use for current event news feeds, communicating with their classmates and teachers, and easy accessibility. Plus, communication between teacher/student responses are posted quickly. I am an Art Teacher at an elementary school so, even though they do have some great art accounts to follow, I do not feel this would be a good platform for elementary students. Other people could get into the account and tweet something that might not be appropriate. I do see in settings that you can block and set up other things to help prevent this, but there are so many different ones. I’m sure I could learn them if I had more time to play around with it.

There are good benefits to Twitter, but I don’t feel it's a friendly user platform for young children. All the different links when trying to read comments and then responding to the correct one. Then the hashtags. This is how it is designed, but I would need something more friendly for my students and myself to use. Maybe, when I have more time to use it and play around with it, I might like it better.

The TweetDeck is pretty cool has everything right there in one place, but I still feel Twitter has too much information and stuff going on. I might be a little ADD and this can be overwhelming to look at for too long. Also looking into topics...there were so many! I like that you can focus on certain subjects/topics. I also saw that you can choose to see less of a topic or company that keeps popping up and I think I saw that you can block them. You can also message people privately. This I did not know. See picture below.

Websites that have a button that allows you to share to Twitter are recipe websites, news websites, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and I can post my photos onto Twitter from my photo app. I did check out HootSuite and saw that you could link all of your social media to one dashboard. It does cost and the lowest one is 49$ a month which to me seems a little high unless that would be beneficial for your job. Flipboard is a really cool platform to get the news. I actually have this app but haven't used it very much. From sports to food to travel and even videos. Like Twitter, you can choose what you would like to follow. I would recommend it.

W1 Vanity Search - Web 2.0 ETEC 527

My Digital Footprints

My digital presence? Digital footprint? Never really thought of it that way. I began my search using just my married name. Do you know how many Julie Davis’ are out there? In fact, I remember when I had my last child in 1997, there was a Julie Davis who had her baby the previous day. What are the odds? Any who. There were lots of Julie Davis' in many fields of employment, but none of those are me.

It was interesting that one of the searches came up with all the right family members, but I was Julie A Davis IV. I don’t really know where the IV came from, but weird. That was really the only thing I found under search for “Julie Davis” so I used my maiden name along with my married name. Not much came up with that other than my Facebook profile. So I searched just my name with my maiden name only. My dad's obituary came up which brought back sad memories. Also, my Facebook and Ancestry.com.

I went back a couple of days later and did another search. J's Closeout Store popped. This was not there on the previous search. I had forgotten about a store my dad and I owned. Unfortunately, it wasn't open very long. Interesting that it came up on this search and not the last one.