Reflection on 8 weeks discussion of educational technology

The last several weeks flew by and were great. The one, huge challenge I faced was figuring out how to interpret assignments and apply them to my situation, which is not K-12. I agonized over what things meant and how to do the work, some of which was geared toward K-12. A great example is the last assignment: although an inclusion allowed for creating any type artifact (noting not everyone is K-12), much of the learning material for the whole lesson focused on school-applications ("3. Research technology use plans at your state level. 4.Find out if your school or district has a technology use plan" etc.). Because I teach and train for a corporation, and wish to apply my skills in education to the nonprofit sector - which I haven't entered yet - these were difficult things for me as I strove to do a good job with everything. For some of the course material and use of the Moodle platform I feel like there was an implicit assumption that students already knew and knew how to do certain things (academic background in teaching, etc.).

Reaching out to Dr. Haskell helped. He was really great. I should have done it more, but I dislike speaking up too much. I also would re-read and re-read and re-read the assignment material, and sometimes let it marinate. Sometimes time would go by as I'd still be fuzzy about applying something and I'd simply attack the assignment feeling blind, giving it my best shot, and at times feeling repetitious compared to previous work I'd submitted.

The artifact I feel is my best is my "Digital Divide/Digital Inequality" presentation, for no other reason than that I spent a lot of time and worked hard on it, and it's looks pretty good (although I am no graphic designer). I'm unsure how to judge the artifact, partially because I am still trying to understand what the word "artifact" even means (despite having looked it up and seen a definition somewhere) or what the purpose of them is. At the start of class it was described that we'll be making artifacts, but it was never really clear to me what they are or why we are making them. I probably just missed something among all the information.

I gained a lot from the course! I understand better how to research, and I've been exposed to a lot of source and material that is relevant to my interests. I've also learned about things I never thought to think about, which are important as well. The course helped give me a path for conducting research. As a result I plan to continue that research in my own time so that I can learn more.

Tech Trends

This last week I dove into a lot of resources about learning tech trends, both in The Horizon Report and afterward, once it stoked the fires of my imagination.

Educational ICT4D budding trends, if you could call them that, that interest me include telepresence/avatars (for lack of better nomenclature) and remote labs. But I discovered less about these than I'd like. Nonetheless, exploring was still instructive, and furthered my knowledge about the other, related topics.

Ultimately I decided to create an infographic to share my ideas. I had never created one before, and I thought it fit what I was wanting to accomplish by explaining these ideas in a palatable way to a peer of mine. In fact, a more detailed write-up in the Google doc linked below explains that this whole idea came about when she said, "... it is hard to determine just how much a smartphone could do for education in remote places." Thanks for the inspiration to create this, Kaelyn!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L__Y1EJxRZTckjBAKWyf25DMSU6gA5LVqCTjxUhoyRA/edit?usp=sharing

EDTECH Research

Conducting research and writing for this annotated bibliography was a heavy process, one that I learned a lot from. I struggled, a lot, with where I fit in as a non-school teacher looking forward in time to projects I know little about and don't currently work on.

My APA skills weren't as hot as I figured they'd be; I knew I had gaping holes in what I knew, but here they were revealed in all their inadequate glory. Purdue's OWL was a great help, as was this gem that I found which I can't recommend enough: http://www.ecu.edu.au/centres/library-services/workshops-and-training/referencing/related-content/downloads/ECU-Referencing-Guide-2014-July-update.pdf.

I also enjoyed (a LOT) digging into Google Scholar and Google Docs' research tools. And ultimately, what I was learned in all the reading and writing about topics that interest me was invaluable.

EDTECH annotated bibliography research paper: AtkinsonM_AnnotatedBib

RSS in Education

I'm going to come clean: I'm not the best organizer. So it was a blessing when I was forced to get my RSS-house in order over the last week. Years ago I used Google Reader a little, but not much. When it went away I switched to Feedly but never "got into it." Last week I returned to my Feedly account and discovered all of my Reader feeds were gone, so I started from scratch.

I'm so glad. I proclaim I'm a lifelong learner - and am - but often fall into sloppy habits of reading the easy stuff that plops into my lap via social feeds like G+ and little more. I've needed discipline to follow a system that would ensure I'm consistently seeing and reading more significant things relevant to my professional and learning interests. RSS is like deliberately planning and eating healthier instead of unthinkingly grabbing whatever yummy junk comes your way, day-to-day.

Hear are some ideas for using RSS in my own learning (which could also be applied for anyone interested in learning):

1. Twitter list RSS:

Many that I follow in ICT4E, as well as elsewhere, are more active and vocal on Twitter than anywhere else. Ryan Barret created a web-based app that provides Atom (RSS) feeds from Twitter (or Facebook) into an RSS reader. I find it helpful to use Twitter Lists to organize people and organizations by topic, so I organized my primary Twitter list into an RSS feed and now happily have all those tweets feeding into... well, Feedly.

What's really cool about that is since these tweets feed into my reader, I have one place to go to read meaningful content instead of multiple places. That's huge!


2. Google/news keyword alerts RSS:

Google keywords are another thing I've not used but have long felt I should be. I haven't because, again, I haven't been organized to consistently be checking them. At best they'd dump into my email, where they'd pester me and I quickly got into a habit of auto-deleting them.

Unfortunately, Google alerts using RSS are not presently working (Google says they do, but alas they don't). Fortunately, Google news alerts do work. Any news articles that feature a keyword set by the user can feed into a RSS reader. To set it up, simply use this format as the URL link you add to the RSS reader (where the red words are examples of whatever keywords you want): http://news.google.com/news?q=email+marketing&output=rss

With this set up, any news articles about topics I'm interested in are automatically delivered to my cyber doorstep. Another victory for using RSS to collect and read important content in one spot! 

3.Google Scholar alerts:

The same can be done with Google Scholar alerts. Similar to setting up the Atom feed, it can be a bit tricky. There are instructions (and details about issues and bugs in the comments below it) here: http://www.robcoers.nl/create-rss-feed-google-scholar-seven-easy-steps/.

These ideas are beneficial to me as a learner, and would be ideal for any other learner, or student - inside the classroom or out.