Professional Development

Every so often, teachers take part in a Professional Development (PD). These usually consist of teachers only and focus on how the teachers could be better at teaching. Last Friday, our DigCit class took part in the PD by presenting to the teachers different applications that they could use in their class to make class less boring and to promote better collaboration. The application I presented to the science teachers was an application called PearDeck. It's kind of like a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation with questions peppered throughout the presentation in order for student to pay attention and participate in the notes or lectures. PearDeck could also be use to record students' answers in order to determine where there need to be improvement or help. I think that this could be a useful tool because I usually find myself getting bored of lectures or notes in class and I believe that with this tool, I will be able to focus on what the teacher is saying and be more attentive. 

The presentation itself is what I was really nervous about because if I were to have made a mistake, all of my teachers would see it. Overall, the presentation was a cakewalk compared to normal school presentations because the teachers don't like to be in PD because they find it boring. This experience also opened my eyes to what the teachers go through in a normal school day with annoying students. Overall though, I feel that the presentation went successfully. I got my information across to my audience and I feel like they received the message I was giving. If I could have changed anything, it would have been my preparation. I feel that had I to practiced, the presentation would have been better (not to say it went poorly). 

After the presentations were completed, the teachers got a chance to work with the applications and the student got to help them any way they could. I was able to answer any questions the teachers had and I got to show them exactly how to use the applications. I hope that in the future, I see some of my teachers using one of the applications presented in this PD in class to better class collaboration.

Passion Project and Guest Speaker

Our passion projects are starting to take shape on our DigCit class. We've uploaded our project proposals to the teacher and we have had the last few weeks to finalize our goals for what we want to have by the end of the year. I have been working hard at thinking of what I want to do because with my topic, I could go in many different directions, but I've decided to go along the lines of a project where I make YouTube videos. The channel will be a place for people to watch my videos and be happy. Once I have a large number of followers, I will initiate phase two. In this step I plan to get people to send me videos or pictures of them doing things to make people happy and by the end of the year, have a compilation of pictures and videos to present to the class in the hopes that people will watch it and be inspired. 

This week in class, we had a professional blogger, Deb Mitchell, talk to us about blogging and how it works in a professional way. She went over how a good blog needs three things to be a successful blog: Purpose, Usefulness, and Empathy. The purpose is the reason you're writing, like who is my audience and what am I writing about? The usefulness speaks for itself. How can your blog be used or how useful is it to others to read? Every blog needs empathy because if the writer doesn't understand what the audience is thinking, then the blog will not feel personal to them. She said that if just one of these three things is absent, then the blog will not be successful and how you need everyone of these. 

Listening to what Mrs. Mitchell had to say about blogging made me think about how I write my blogs. Whenever we are given a blogging assignment by our teacher, she gives us guidelines to follow, but now I realize that blogging is not a chore or just another school assignment. It's a way to project your voice by means that can benefit a lot of people. I plan to use my newfound outlook on blogging to my advantage, telling people how my project is going and getting feedback on what changes need to be made in my project.

Twitter Chats and Genius Time

Through the use of Tweetdeck and Twitter, our class was able to participate in a Twitter chat which is basically a a conversation on Twitter using a specific hashtag focused on a discussion with questions and people can give their input by answering the questions. I was a lot of fun and taught me that Twitter is more than a way for people to tell everyone what they're doing. If I were to moderate a Twitter chat, I would have the chat about how people act positively in the community. I would give me a way to directly ask the people questions for my project. I would choose this specifically because My project is about how I can spread joy and happiness and if there is a way for me to see directly what makes people happy, I would do everything to try to accomplish it.

For my passion project, I've also decided to follow the Twitter chat under the #CaringChat hashtag because I feel that to be happy, one must first care. Getting a lot of input from different people on the internet will help me solidify my main projects product. By using a lot of different Twitter chats for my project, I am able to get much more input from people than if I were only using one chat for my project. 

I could use this idea and concept of Twitter chats as a way for me to get genius time hours because its a way for me to formulate and make a concept of how the general people think and feel about my topic. Genius hours are dedicated hours of your day dedicated to working on your passion or something your passionate about. It isn't school or work related, its just time for you to do your own work.

Before my teacher taught us about Twitter chats, I thought that Twitter was just a way for people to tell other people about whats going on in their lives. I never thought that Twitter could be used as a way to hold conversations and meeting with people. I now realize why Twitter was made. Twitter was made to get people's messages across a medium where everyone can read and interpret their message. Twitter chats are just an example of how people can get their messages across to many people. I plan to use this to my advantage in gathering information for my project.