Week 6 Reflection-Myself as a digital learner

The most intriguing thing that I have done this week is the act of unfollowing people on twitter. This requirement caused me reconsider my idea of how twitter is intended to be used. I was following 41 people, almost to the required 50 for class. I felt this was a solid list, until I realized I could be even more intentional with how I use twitter. I went through the process of unfollowing a total of 8 people/organizations. The reasoning for unfollowing was based on my intention to begin using twitter for education related tweets. I am hoping to use my newfound networking skills as an opportunity to connect, and learn from other Health and Fitness educators. I began to look for things that were relevant to me, such as the school district that I work in, local news, and several more Health and Fitness instructors that have been nationally recognized. I began to follow people such as the superintendent of the district that I work at, even though she had made her twitter account available last year. I now realize this is the quickest way to find out if we have a snow day! Following 40 people once again, I feel confident that I will begin to receive even more relevant information that I wish to engage with. I realize the act of unfollowing has helped me to decide how twitter can be used as tool to help me grow as an educator.

Currently, the most challenging task for me is trying to figure out this week’s weekly play. I intend to do the weekly play of creating ten snap chats for a story about something that I am passionate about. The theme will be education related items, such as paperwork that needs to be graded, my lesson planner, academic planner, laptop, lunch bag and so on. I am struggling to figure out how I should share this assignment with my professor and class. I am going to try and somehow link my chat story to the blog page, use the blog page to direct people to my weekly play, or share the link through twitter. If there is a share story option on snapchat, I may use it to share directly onto the blog. Stay tuned!

I realize that using interactive technology to teach is highly beneficial for students. Agendas, and learning objectives are usually put up on the whiteboard at the beginning of each each of my lessons. Knowing that students respond to pictures rather than words, I have begun to put objectives onto google slide presentations. Even though I still use more words than I would like, I am hoping to get used to adding more pictures. A current challenge that I am seeing with regards to moving participatory culture into schools is the fact that students are usually banned from having cell phones out in class. The use of technology is usually one-sided, with the teacher being the one using it. My question for the week is how can a participatory culture be created in the classroom, when cell phone use is limited?