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/