Reflecting back on the last 7-weeks, I have grown more than I had anticipated. Prior to taking the course I believed I would learn a little bit about using social media with students, but I wasn’t prepared for the way this course would change my professional connections. I believe building on and seeking purposeful members to my own PLN has changed my position as an educator for the better. I firmly believe this should be taught to teacher candidates in undergrad. It is amazing how motivated I am to work and learn with my PLN now and to think I didn’t have these supports as strongly in place just seven short weeks ago. This course exceeded all expectations.
As a technology instructional coach, I am responsible for delivering a lot of PD to my school site and district. I appreciated that we were able to tailor our projects to what we wanted to learn and develop for our own role. Not only that, I will never give a PD session again without curating some of the best resources I have found. I think that curating through Scoop.it, Storify, or others allows for differentiation for teachers as well. As teachers are at all different levels, if I am teaching a particular topic and a teacher already knows this, they can look through the curated topics to learn on their own. This is so powerful, to give the teachers your own curated list, not to mention than to encourage them curate and have their students curate also!
I was surprised by how much I took to Twitter and Webinars. I had been using a Twitter account sparingly, but now I understand the true purpose for educators. My only worry is that lack of time will limit my participation in Twitter chats. My goal is to set time in my weekly schedule for both curating, Twitter chats and participating in the Google+ communities that have been beneficial so far. I hope to find and participate in Webinars during my lunch period as much as possible. Not only that, as a coach, I will also be finding and recommending topic-specific Webinars and Twitter chats to teachers with whom I work. This course has changed me and my motivations about working with a PLN and social media in the professional and school setting.
Finally, reflecting on my blog itself, I am proud of the documenting and reflecting I have done for this course. I thoughtfully approached all entries and worked to apply them to my professional setting to make the most meaning. If there is one thing I would strive to do differently would be to engage in conversation with classmates more through our blogs. Especially with respect to the culture of social networks, I could do a better job of responding and commenting to others’ posts. However, we were able to do some of this in our class Facebook group as well. With this being said, I would give myself about 95% (72/75).
Cassandra Davenport: EdTech Learning Log 