EME 6414 - bdevies

I have been contemplating what my blogging future looks like moving forward as this is my last post for #EME6414. I have really enjoyed the process of blogging and writing out my reflections and learning moments from this course. I don't want that practice to end as I continue in my doctoral journey but I have been reflecting on how it may look different moving forward. Do I transform this blog space into a general Ph.D. journey reflection blog? Make a new blog space? Continue this practice in a journal? Transform this content to another platform (ex: Instagram or Twitter)? It almost feels like too many options. It is one of the reasons I loved this semester because this element of the course had one option for content and reflection delivery. While I haven't made a decision (likely from a fatiguing semester), I am excited that there is a chance to keep up this practice and continue making meaning in writing and in Web 2.0 space. In conclusion, I am just so thankful for this cl...

Here are my "top three" tools I am eager to keep using from this course. I wanted to record them here as a reminder to my (future) self: VoiceThread I have already recommended this tool many times to colleagues and friends. I love how user-friendly it is and how easy it is to engage with the presentations in many ways. As remote work means more remote teaching and professional development, I am exploring new ways I can use this in my teaching and conference presentations. Padlet I love this Web 2.0 tool and had a great time exploring it for our second assignment this semester! I love that you can pull in so many resources and the beautiful layouts the tool offers. I want to continue exploring ways to use this in the classroom too! Slack I used this for my Produsage assignment and look forward to using the final product with my team moving forward! I love how functional it can make teams, especially in times of continuing remote work! I loved that this course let me choose my ...

I submitted my final assignment earlier this week and wanted to compile ten themes, learning moments, and reflections from that assignment to this space as a "bookend" of sorts: 1. Remote work is less isolating and difficult when you are aware of online platforms and tools that can keep you connected in many ways. 2. This class made me realize my  need, urgency, and desire to expand my personal learning network within my discipline. 3. My personal learning network started haphazardly but become more refined from my time working in The Career Center and more intentional from this course.  4. I have learned from so many wise humans in my life who have informed my personal learning network and engagement online. 5. It is okay to be hesitant of context collapse in forming your network, but use that as a sign to be more intentional in your curation - not hinder you from engaging!  6. Our professional networks are not just the people who shares similar job titles to ours! Learn...

As I recently submitted my course evaluation and as we near the end, I wanted to spend some time reflecting on this semester and this course. This course could not have come at a better time. As we continue to move forward in remote work and increased online learning, this class has increased my knowledge of learning platforms and Web 2.0 tools immensely. Not only do I know more tools, but I understand the intentionality in when to use them. Dr. Dennen has been such a bright light in this semester and beautifully modeled the grace we need to provide students and to ourselves. It is hard to balance everything in the middle of everything 2020 has dealt, but a major takeaway I have learned from this semester is how critical it is to communicate when life is heavy and when to ask for support. This online classroom community Dr. Dennen has built and we all contributed too has given me hope for my remote teaching and learning this fall. It is also immensely useful that all of our class assig...

In trying to decide on a platform for me to use for the Produsage: Performance Support (Informal Learning) assignment, I decided what content I wanted to do but was torn on a platform. I wanted to create a space for me and my colleagues to be more virtually collaborative in our remote teaching this coming fall. I needed it to be space that allowed for multiple channels, was user friendly, and allowed for a lot of different mediums to be shared. My office already had a Microsoft Teams account that we don't use that I contemplated using but decided to actually go with Slack because it seemed to better fit my goals. Below are some of the things they have in common and a few differences. Hope this is helpful to some! Both: Collaborative workspaces Similar layouts and visual displays Both built for team productivity Microsoft Teams: Released in 2017 Built more to work well with Microsoft Office 365, allows for seamless collaboration in Office 365 Can video call within the platform Not a...

I was really excited to see Google Maps as a tool this week. Just recently, I had learned about all the amazing things Google Maps can do outside of navigation. Someone in our program has been working to use Google Maps to pinpoint the location of our program alumni across the global (pinpointing their current institution of employment). This tool will be so helpful for current students to find alumni who work in their area of interest, help the program see where their graduates are collectively, and many other fun assessments to do with this dynamic Web 2.0 platform. With the link shared in class this week, I also learned about a lot of other fascinating ways to use maps, like the classroom that tracked black bears. While I think there are countless interesting ways to use this in the classroom, I am also thinking about all the fascinating ways this could be used for research. This could be a fascinating data visualization to show where data was collected from in multi-institutional ...

I know I am doing two tool reviews this week but to be honest, both of these tools have been on my radar as ones I have wanted to learn more about so I am eager to review them and learn them in the process.  Also, on the platform itself, part of our checklist was to review it on our blog! Trello is an organizational list platform created in 2011. I once made a Trello list but did it without ever exploring the platform or reading about its functionality. I have seen many use it successfully so I am hoping to keep learning. Pros: As someone who is using an Excel sheet to track all my assignments and deadlines this semester, I love this to-do list platform. You can see all your lists in one screen! In community pages like our class page, you can easily comment, add to lists, and make a new list. You can easily link to your Google Account, which makes for easy log-in and referencing in Google Chrome.  The icons at the top of the screen can make for easy navigation through the pla...

This week, we only had a few tools to explore but one immediately caught my attention as just a few weeks ago, one of the teams I am on decided to use this as our main communication platform moving forward. Slack is a business communication tool that was founded in 2013. See below for my review with some pros and cons of my initial use of the platform: Pros: Really easy to set up! I went to get into our class page by clicking our link, entered my work email, it sent me a verification email and I was immediately able to start on the platform. It lands you on the page with a neat to do list (see image below) of best practices to get started with the platform, including adding a profile picture, setting up notifications, checking the channels, and more. It allows for many modes of communications and messages with different people to all be streamlined on this platform. It is very easy to add channels and navigate between channels on the left bar. Some of our class channels I found intere...

I am writing this blog post as a follow-up to my post last week. After many trials and errors (and some good friends helping me learn along the way), I learned the YouTube playlist I had crafted was not tracking the data I thought it was going to (I will elaborate a little more on what this looks like and YouTube Studio in my VoiceThread). I was really discouraged and started a third platform (one of our tools from last week: Padlet) and ran into some more roadblocks there with their statistics tracking being minimally operating with COVID-19 staffing and not getting the robust tracking data I had hoped to. After emailing and processing with Dr. Dennen, I wanted to offer some of my reflections that I may not be able to elaborate on as much in my VoiceThread from this assignment: 1. Lean into uncertainty and learning. I ended up using and trying 3 platforms for this assignment and I am going to include them all in my VoiceThread. Why? Because they each taught me something about knowled...