Course Reflection

Throughout this past semester I have learned a great deal of information on how to use technology in a professional way. From assignments such as twitter, disconnecting from technology, websites, and LinkedIn, I have learned many ways to use technology to network and build a professional presence online.  I really enjoyed this course, because it allowed me to curve each project to my future career field. I was able to see how I can use each of these items in my future. Twitter will be useful to me to interact with students and other teachers. The research and survey assignment allowed me to learn more about my field as well as implement technology into my assignment.

LinkedIn will be great to connect with other professionals in my field, as well as employers in my future. Building a website in my future will be very useful to connect with students, parents, and fellow teachers to let them know what is going on in my classroom. Our biggest resource in this world is our peers or colleagues. Teachers especially need to utilize connections to become innovative and effective in teaching our students. Even the disconnecting from technology assignment taught me a lot about my technology habits which will be useful to me in my future. I think others should take this course, because regardless of what career field you are entering there are items you can take away from this course that will be useful to you in the future, especially the resume building. What is great about this course was that it wasn’t generalized, you could individualize it to your future career, which I think is pretty unique. Overall I really learned a lot and enjoyed this course.

Twitter Reflection

Throughout the semester I have been working on completing my twitter project. What I did for this project was follow professionals in the field of teaching and professional organizations in that field as well. I also went onto tweet more than 40 professional tweets regarding education. I was already very familiar with twitter, which made this project fairly easy for me to do. The most difficult part about this project was coming up with professional tweets, due to the fact that I am just stepping into the world of education and I am not as knowledgeable on the subject as others yet. However I did learn a lot from those that I followed and I learn a lot about how Twitter can be a great way to have professional connections in the world of teaching. It is a great way to connect with other teachers as well as students.

LinkedIn Project

My final project for my information media class was to create a resume and Linkedin profile. I started this project by learning about the do’s and don’ts of writing my resume. I then built my resume. I created a LinkedIn account and began by adding my past work and volunteer experiences. I wrote a short summary about myself and slowly added important professional details about me. After that I began by connecting with people I knew and then I began searching for groups and professionals in the education world to connect with as well.

The part I enjoyed the most was putting all of my information into my profile. The most difficult part was finding others to connect with in my field. I don’t see that a lot of education professionals use LinkedIn, or at least not as much as other career fields. It was also difficult, because not everyone accepted my connection request and it was difficult to reach the number of professional connections that was required. Next time I would try and connect with more people, which would increase the number of acceptances I received. Overall I think this project taught me a really great way to connect with other professionals, and gain potential job opportunities.

If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, here is my profile:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-mccarthy-4120a412a

Digital Media & Society

For my next assignment I was to answer the question how digital media has changed the way businesses and individuals market themselves. I believe that due to the growing technology that people have access to, business and individuals use that to their benefit. They not only can distribute themselves through the internet and reach a much larger audience, they also can be allowed to be much more creative and unique.

The next part of the assignment was to view and critique an interactive resume. I will post the link below so that you can view it as well. At first the interactive resume was loud and a lot to look at. However I would say that it is a very creative and fun way to display your achievements. I believe that for that person, it was a way to make them stand out. There were some design choices that I didn’t perceive greatly. For instance the levels of efficiency, such as master, expert, beginner, etc., that got to be a lot to look at and a tad confusing. I think there would have been a better way to display that information. However overall I liked the layout and the creativity. Once you adjusted yourself to what you were viewing it was a fun way to learn about people's qualifications.  

http://rleonardi.com/interactive-resume/

Website Project Reflection

This week I completed my website project. What I did to complete this project was begin by reading and understanding the basics to creating a website through the material on my classes website. I then created a wire frame. A wire frame is essentially a plan or visual layout of how you want your website to look like and operate. This was very helpful in putting together my website, because I already had ideas for how I wanted it to look like. I then began writing the content I wanted to share on my site and typing it into a separate word document. I also found the images I was planning on using as well. From there I created a Weebly.com account. It is a very user friendly website creator. I was easily able to copy and paste my materials, and change the layouts and background for my website. Weebly had some fun additives I ended up incorporating into my website that weren’t on my initial plan.

The part about this project I enjoyed the most was using the Weebly site to finally put my website together. The most difficult part of the project was planning what content I wanted to use and how to word things nicely on my website. I think Weebly worked really well in allowing me to put my website together very easily. Next time I were to make a website, I would investigate the website creator prior to making my wire frame. This would be helpful so that I could plan to that website creators capabilities.  Overall I think this website project will be a very useful tool for me in my future as a teacher. Many educators have website to connect with students, parents, and colleagues.

Here is a link to my website if you want to check it out:

http://techintheclassrooms.weebly.com/

Technology Disconnect Reflection

As some of you may know my first project for this course was to disconnect from technology for 24 hours. You really don’t realize how reliant upon technology we are in every minute of our day until you remove it. Overall my 24 hours of disconnecting went fairly well, it did have some struggles and temptations however. My day began with a different alarm sounding, because I usually use my cell phone as my alarm clock. I had borrowed a standard alarm clock from my parents to use during the disconnect. As the day passed I realized how bored I quickly had become without checking social media after classes and in my free time. I think two of the toughest things for me to give up we're listening to music while I was exercising and not being able to just turn on the tv or music while I was doing homework or a variety of things.

Oddly enough one of the easiest things was giving up my cell phone. I had left my cell phone in my roommate's room so I wouldn’t be tempted or accidentally use it. Without my cell phone I got a lot of things done and I was much less distracted throughout the day. However I will not say just because it was easier to give up than others, doesn’t mean it was actually easy to go without. I think what surprised me the most throughout my day was how much I seen others obsessively looking at their phones throughout the day. Also how many times I encounter technology through my day. When I was in my friends car driving I couldn’t listen to the radio, or when my roommates were in the living room watching the tv, I couldn’t join them. Even the slightest things when my roommate would say “hey, look at this on my phone” or “hey did you see that person's post on Instagram”, I almost slipped up not realizing what I would be doing. It was frustrating sitting in a room with my roommates when they would all be listening to music or Netflix through their headphones or scrolling through social media on their phone. It was very quiet at times and all I wanted to do was talk to pass the time.

I think my disconnect was tough on my mom. She was not happy when I told her she wouldn’t be able to get ahold of me for 24 hours. Also my roommates had a tough time, because they would forget that I couldn’t check my phone or join them during a movie and a variety of things. Overall I wouldn’t say that I overly enjoyed this assignment, but it did give me some perspective on how much technology exists in my life. I wouldn’t attempt a disconnect again however, because it takes a lot of planning and willpower to succeed. In the end I realized how much I appreciate the technology in our lives.

Website Project

The next project we are working on is creating a website, which will display our findings from our research paper as well as our survey project. I plan to first make a plan of what exactly to display on my website and from there I will complete the tasks within this project and finally then create and design my website.

My initial ideas of this project is that I am excited for it. I created a website in a class in high school and I think that will be helpful with this project. I am excited to do this, because many teachers have website to help connect with their students, colleagues, and their students parents. It will be a very useful tool for me to know how to use in the future. I feel ready and excited to complete this project!

Survey Reflection

The survey project I had been working on finally came to an end this last week. After I wrote out my survey questions I began distributing it. I shared it here on my last blog as well as on twitter, Facebook, and I sent out emails as well. Once I received enough completed surveys I began. writing up my report on my results and making my infographic. What I enjoyed the most about this project was making the infographic. It was fun to display my results in a more artistic and visual type of way. I have posted the image of my infographic to the right.

What I found hard to do for this project was actually get completed surveys. I had to remind people about it in order to get enough results. This got to be frustrating, but I was in the end able to accomplish it. I think all of the sites such as google forums works really smoothly for surveys. It is a simple and very user friendly. If I were to do this again I would distribute my survey in more places to ensure I was able to get more results in a quicker amount of time. Overall I thought this project was a great learning experience and very beneficial to my future as a teacher!

Survey

Hi everyone, below I have posted the link to my survey! If any of you could take a chance to take my survey for my information media class, I would greatly appreciate it!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScpe2MKUh_fmFCZahh5PcRNNA1_Zgve3ioa2I9hxr-kmqIPjQ/viewform

Survey and Infographic Project

Our next assignment for this class is to complete a survey/infographic project. I’m thinking that this project will be interesting and useful to learn how to do. Overall I am excited to get started working on it. I will first start by picking a topic and making a list of survey questions to ask. I will then narrow my questions down later on. I will then proceed to make my survey. After I make the survey I will work on distributing my survey through my social media accounts. I am however worried that I will not get enough responses from my survey, despite sharing it through social media. Overall I am looking forward to getting started on this project and I hope to learn more about how this could be useful in my future career as a teacher!

Intellectual Thinking

Our next blog assignment is in regards to intellectual thinking. I believe it is always important for everyone to be critically thinking and analyzing things. Sometimes all we do is listen, but never really analyze or think on our own. We read an article titled “Universal Intellectual Standards” , this article discusses the importance of teachers asking questions, that allow the students to think. The article discusses eight standards essential in the reasoning

process. Although they each have a different purpose, they all stem from evaluating and questioning your thought process.

I believe relevance is one of the most important of the eight. You must ask yourself when writing a paper and doing many things if what you're saying and thinking is relevant. If what you are writing isn't relevant, is it teaching you anything? Is it engaging your audience, or teaching them something important? As a future teacher, I believe it is important to encourage to think about these items, such a relevance, accuracy, and logic. If teachers introduce these strategies from a young age students will gain a deeper understanding of how to use these techniques in many ways, not only in the education setting. I believe just like we learn a sequence to a story, that we should be taught through worksheets and assignments how to think intellectually. I believe the tools that could be used are worksheets to assist with organization of thoughts. I also think discussions within a class could be a resourceful way to learn from each other about deeper questions and reasoning. Overall it is a learning process that involves practice and continued learning from teachers and peers to achieve.

Research Project Progress

The topic I have chosen to research for my research project is looking at how technology affects  students with special needs in the classroom? I find this topic interesting, because so many schools are becoming one to one with technology. Technology has become such a useful tool for classrooms. I am curious how technology has become incorporated into special needs students lives in the classroom. So far the research process is going fairly well. It has been more difficult to find scholarly article on how effective it is so far. However the internet has provided some very interesting and useful websites.

I have learned quite a bit from my research so far such as,  that technology can not only help motivate special needs students, but it gives them a better way to communicate or become more involved in their classrooms. I read a very interesting article titled “Bridging the Gap” today that I highly recommend anyone interested in this topic to read. I have posted the link to the article below. I do wish there were more articles pertained to a smaller range on this topic, because it is a fairly broad topic. The hardest part of this project is going to be to narrow down my focuses and to begin the writing process. I am looking forward to learning more about the correlation between technology and special needs students.

Here is the link to the article:

Bridging the Gap

Research Projects

The next project we are working on in exploring digital media is an annotated bibliography and a research project. We are to choose a topic within our future career field and explore an issue or question pertaining to that topic. I chose to research how technology affects students with special needs. I plan to accomplish this project by using my university's library page to find good sources for a start. We are also using the website Refworks to help us in creating our bibliography. I have decided I am going to take each source at a time. Now that I have completed my annotated bibliography it is going to be easier to make my concept map and begin writing from there. I am actually very excited about this project. It is going to be a lot of work, but I have picked a topic I am very interested in learning about.

There are a few different ideas I want to explore within this topic. I want to focus on a certain disability, such as autism to see the effects that technology has on it. I also want to examine how much technology is being incorporated into special education classrooms. Lastly I would like to find out the ways in which it is helping special needs students learn in the classroom. Overall I am excited to see what I learn from this project and see if it will give me ideas in my future career.

Professional Twitter Take 2

The second project, which I have continued to work on for my digital media course is learning and using twitter professionally. For this assignment we had to follow five professional organizations and five people who are working in our future career field. We also have to continue tweet professionally throughout this semester.

Being my major is either going to be being elementary or special education the professional organizations I decided to follow are within the field of education. I decided to follow, The National Education Association, National Association for Gifted Children, Council of Administrators of Special Education, The National Associate for the Education of Young Children, and the American Library Association.

I hope to gain many things from following these organizations. I believe that each organization will be a great resource on keeping me current and up to date on news and things occurring in education. I also believe that it will be an excellent resource on ideas to use in my future classroom. They will help me gain knowledge to better teach my students as well as get me connected with other people in my field. One of the number one resources in education is colleagues and others within your field. It will not only benefit me, but my future students for me to follow and stay current with these organizations.

Digital Media and Society

For my next assignment I viewed a powerpoint called Data, Information, Wisdom, and Google. I was asked for this assignment to answer two questions. Question number one being, “What is Google?” Before viewing the powerpoint I would have just described it as a search engine that can find you the answer or site to just about anything you want. However the powerpoint used a good image that portrayed an analogy of what Google is. It said that it is similar to a paper with many sources. It is very true, because Google can give you a lot of information and it is filled with different sources to do so. I thought that was a very good way of understanding it. Google has multiple types of searches as well, such as images, videos, news, maps, blogs, scholarly material, and books. Google's search capabilities are very broad. The image posted below is of the analogy the powerpoint provided.

The second question I was asked to answer is, “How has internet searching changed our lives over the past 20 years?” The Internet has changed so many aspects of our lives in the past 20 years. Search engines have allowed answers to, what feels like infinite questions, just a click away. We no longer use items such as the dictionary or encyclopedias to find answers to our questions. Even many textbooks have been eliminated due to the ease of searching online for answers. Searching on the internet has eliminated many things for us. We use it to find answers, telephone numbers, maps, and many more things. In the past 20 years we have grown more efficient with our use of the internet. As positive of an effect it has had, we have become very dependent on searching the internet for answers. I think over the next couple of decades we will see significant changes, just as we have the past 20 years as well.

Using Twitter Professionally

My second project we are working on in class is learning to use Twitter professionally. This project includes following professional organizations and people who work in your future career field. As well as tweeting professionally throughout the semester. This also includes using professional images and a professional twitter handle. My initial idea of this project was very positive. I already use twitter for personal reasons and was intrigued by the idea of using it to build a professional profile. I’ve already learned a lot about twitter and how to use it to stay informed and build connections in the world of education.

For this project we have to tweet professionally at least 30 times. I have already followed organizations and people who work in education and have begun tweeting. I plan to continue to accomplish this project by tweeting at least once or twice a week. I have wrote reminders for myself on my calendar so that I do not forget. If you want to see what my professional twitter profile looks like, I have posted an image of my professional twitter profile below. So far I am feeling really good about this project and am excited to continue using twitter to build a professional profile, learn more about the world of education, and possibly even make professional connections.

Technology Disconnect

For the past few weeks I have been working on our first project in my digital media course. The assignment is to disconnect from technology for 24 hours. In today’s society we don’t realize how much we rely upon technology. We use technology for class, homework, work, and most frequently for entertainment. I find myself checking my phone in between classes and checking social media just to pass time each day. You wouldn't think disconnecting from technology for only 24 hours would be so difficult until you begin to think about how much technology is in our day to day lives.

I have been working on preparing to disconnect from technology for about a week now. To prepare for the disconnect I have made a list of homework I will need to make sure that I complete prior to the disconnect. These assignments are ones that require the use of the internet to complete. I have also made a list of devices or items I can’t use during the disconnect. This includes things such as my cell phone, laptop, radio, car radio, and TV. I even had to borrow my mom’s alarm clock for this project, because I use my cell phone as an alarm each day. I have also warned my roommates and my family that I will be away from my phone for 24 hours as well. I told them if an emergency were to happen to call my roommate's phone to get in touch with me. My parent’s are even less thrilled than me about this assignment. They are not fond of the idea of not being able to reach me in a split second.

I think the most challenging part of this assignment will be having to stay away from technology when I live with roommates. It will be tempting to want to join my roommates while they watch a movie and many other things. Oddly enough I think the easiest will be not communicating with people through text and social media. I am slightly looking forward to not having to keep up with communication for a day. I think it will be slightly peaceful. I think the most difficult will be giving up my cell phone. I am periodically checking it throughout the day. It is used for music, my alarm, email, social media and communication. I think it will feel very odd to not have it with me for an entire day. I wasn’t very excited for this assignment at first, but as I have prepared I am dreading it less and less. Overall I am slightly excited to see how difficult or easy I find this assignment to be.

Introduction

Hello,

My name is Emily and I am currently in my second year of college and I am planning on majoring in either elementary or special education. I have had many experiences where I have been involved with working with children. I have loved every second of my time with those students and I am excited to have the opportunity to make that into a career.

I am currently taking a course about exploring digital media, which is the reason for me starting this blog. Throughout this course I will be learning how to relate technology to my future career field. In the world of education we must rely on our resources whether they be our colleagues or the internet.  I believe this course will show me how to use technology not only in my classroom, but also to network with fellow teachers as well. I have already learned many things and I look forward to sharing further and more detailed posts on what exactly I have been learning about.