![]() This final blogfolio is an overview of the entire ITD 645 class, Computers in Education, for the summer semester 2020. It includes the various technology tools that we have implemented in this class as well as my personal feelings about each tool, experiences with hands-on projects, group teamwork, blog and blog commenting, video clips and the electronic portfolio. What I learned in this class ![]() This course was an interesting journey for me as I am not a classroom teacher but work in the professional field as a senior program manager. I can see how this could relate to my area of work in setting up and coordinating various training needs and applicable to my future career field of human capital development and IT instruction. The textbook, Teaching and Learning with Technology, by Judy Lever-Duffy, and Jean McDonald, provided great insight and direction in understanding the relationship between technology and education, whether it be classroom teaching or instructional design. I learned about several previously unknown national standards for teaching, as well as technology tools, lesson plans, learning objectives, and DID models. I had never even heard of many of these prior to this experience. The videos were a great aid to the reading of the chapter materials and enhanced my learning experience. The hands-on projects, however, were my favorite learning experience in this class. This hands-on experience with various tools opened my eyes to what's available and what will work with future needs I encounter in IT Design. It also helped prepare me to be more considerate of potential difficulties that my future students/trainees might encounter when using these or similar tools. I have a lot of previous knowledge of technology and tools, but many of the ones we used in this class were brand new to me, and the experience of using them has been hugely beneficial. Some will be used in my professional field, while some I see being useful in future teaching endeavors. I thoroughly enjoyed the group portion of this class. I was partnered with a wonderful group of women and was fortunate to have teachers with classroom experience on my team to make up for some of my lack of experience in that area. We communicated and worked well together, dividing tasks and getting done ahead of schedule. We produced quality assignments that I am proud to showcase in this blog. Reflection on Learning Tools ITD Learning Portfolio Blog Our first project consisted of creating a blog using the web development platform Weebly to record our weekly homework reflections, share our class projects, and interact with our group members and teacher. I have made several websites on Weebly, so this was both a relatively easy and enjoyable task for me. By nature, I am not a huge talker, nor am I an avid blogger, but this has been an excellent experience for me in how a blog can keep track of learning experiences or projects completed. Slack After several failed attempts to establish the WeChat app for our group communication tool, we decided to use Slack for group communications and file sharing. I had used it previously and love the application and the ease of use along with the various channels and the mobile notifications. I find it to be easier to organize projects and keep track of things than multiple emails or texts. Classroom Funding Proposal Our first group project was to submit a classroom funding proposal. We worked well together on the various aspects of this document and ended up with a quality proposal. You can read more about Our Ideal 21st Century Classroom and view the proposal document by HERE. This was a great learning experience for anyone seeking grant funding. Click on the header for links to each group project Lesson Plan The lesson plan was a new thing for me to experience. I have never put one together before, so I relied heavily on my group mates with teaching experience for this project. This served as the basis for all of our future group projects, so it was critical that we have an excellent and cohesive lesson plan. The lesson plan included: course title, objectives, grade level, activities, assignments, and resources. It was a helpful experience should I ever need to create my own lesson plan. Google Apps (Google Form, Google Slides & Google Docs) Using google forms for a survey was new to me as I primarily use a survey service such as survey monkey. This is one tool that I plan to implement in my professional work moving forward, as I was very impressed by the capabilities and the fact that it is free! I use google documents regularly, mainly when training my student workers or for project planning. These are a fantastic tool for collaborative projects/learning and could be easily implemented into classroom and group projects. Podcasting Software I loved learning about creating a podcast and am excited to use this in the future for various instructions needs both in and out of the classroom. I love to listen to podcasts but never considered making one myself before. I could see how this could be applicable in my marketing or recruiting strategies in the future. I can also see how this could be an excellent homework tool for students or an online resource to supplement a course. Movie Making Software Videos are useful in a variety of teaching scenarios. I enjoyed exploring the Windows Movie Maker, Windows Live Movie Maker, iMovie, storybird.com, and wevideo.com software as options for creating a video. I have made several videos for marketing purposes but enjoyed the application to the teaching perspective. This can be an invaluable tool in the classroom to highlight a lecture or enhance a learning module by providing a different, fun way to hear the information. For our Movie Story we used the Adobe Spark platform which was very intuitive and easy to use. Interactive Video The Edupuzzle was utterly new to me, and I was intrigued by how this could be used in the teaching field. I don't see it as very applicable to what I currently do, but could see it being useful for future IT design or workers training. Edupuzzle class code: dorsuja Weebly Course Website The course website was, by far, my favorite assignment simply because I love to create and manage websites and have a lot of experience with them. However, this was my first experience in making a course website, and I learned a lot of valuable information in the layout, design, and planning for an education-related website. It was a work in progress as we worked through different projects. The course website included the home page, the course materials page, the page for assignments, the resources page, the contact page, and a page linked to our group's individual blogs. Padlet Padlet was a brand new tool that I was introduced to in this class. Padlet is a virtual collaborative whiteboard. I absolutely love the collaborative nature of Padlet and can see a multitude of uses for this technology tool! It was easy to embed into the website and easy for the group to contribute to the project. Thinglink Thinglink was another platform that I was completely unfamiliar with prior to this class. I found Thinglink to be a very user friendly free resource that turns any image into an interactive bulletin board. Hot spots can be created for videos, reading materials, quizzes and more. It easily embeds into a website or blog. I loved using this platform and plan to use it for marketing and recruiting in my job. Scoop.it Scoop.it is a mashup of a social network site and a content creation tool. It allows you to create interactive bulletin boards where users can share content, thoughts, comments, etc. while connecting with other users. Users can post new material, get suggestions for material from Scoop.it or "scoop" content from other Scoop.it boards. Sharing of scoops via social networks is easy and a great way to build your audience. This is another great marketing/recruiting tool that I will be utilizing in the future for my job. Quizzizz Quizzizz is a delightful platform that easily interacts with Google classroom. It offers bright colors and fun music to create a game-like experience for learning. It boasts a clean simple design while being easy to set up and use. The instant student feedback makes learning a snap and it is a useful tool for any learning environment. Rubistar We used RubiStar to create our classroom rubric. It was fairly easy to use by following a pre-designed template or creating your own. Personal Strengths and weaknessesMy biggest weakness in this class was my lack of teaching and classroom experience. Many of the standards, the DID plans, the lesson plans, the rules, regulations etc. were simply new to me and quite overwhelming at times. Most of the questions were geared towards the classroom and how I would implement or integrate my learning with the classroom. I struggled greatly with this as I have no classroom experience so was answering hypothetically and often felt that I couldn't relate to a real-world experience. My greatest strength in the class was my previous experience with a variety of technology tools. While I am always looking and open to new tools, my background, diversity and experience with multiple technological tools greatly helped me with this learning experience. Integrating into the classroom ![]() While I am not a classroom teacher and have no plans to be a classroom teacher, I do see myself implementing many of these tools in my future career in human capital development and IT design. I am planning to create online workshops and training tools and many of these tools, insights, design elements, and more will be very useful to implementing a successful training program in the future. Future learning goals I am a lifelong learner. I have been a student and learner my whole life and I don't see my educational journey ending anytime soon. I am already looking into possibilities for obtaining my Ph.D. once I complete my masters degree in the fall of 2021.
It can not be denied that technology is a rapidly changing and developing field. Technologies will continue to expand and grow at a rapid rate and I am excited to see what the future holds in the way of technological breakthroughs. I look forward to staying abreast of new and upcoming technology and various tools relevant to my career.
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7/22/2020 06:31:41 pm
Hi Melanie,
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AuthorMy name is Melanie and I am in my first year of pursing a Master's degree in Human Capital Development with an emphasis on IT Design at USM. I currently work as a Senior Program Manager for USM. Blogroll
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