Wow, what an informative week. I must say we are hitting the ground running. I have used more social media and various technology platforms this week than I have in my whole life. While still rather daunting, my one-on-one assessment with Valerie instilled a little more confidence in me and I feel less overwhelmed with it all. Valerie and spoke about copyright laws and privacy, and how I should ensure my digital media presence should adhere to these laws and that I should reframe from disclosing any personal information that is not essential. I have done my best to correct my blog posts and Twitter profile to reflect these standards.
Today we had a guest speaker, Jesse Miller, who was incredibly knowledgeable about navigating utilizing the digital world as an instructor. He brought up the topic of professionalism which I thought to be quite important as a new teacher. I have a minimal social media footprint and have little content that I feel uncomfortable sharing with my students. However, there are some old photos that I should remove from when I was in California. I will be going through my Facebook with a fine-tooth comb sometime next week. Jesse also recommended some useful resources that I can access in the UVic library, so I will be exploring those at some point next week as well.
The technological platforms I have used this week are as follows:
Twitter: I have set up my account, started following the recommended accounts and my fellow classmates. My profile is complete and free of copyright infractions.
Tweetdeck: I have created an account on Tweetdeck and have started adding columns. I have yet to spend a considerable amount of time navigating this platform though. I also plan on checking out Feedly.
Mattermost: Mattermost has proven to be a useful tool for communicating with the class and members of my pod. However, we also use a Facebook group chat as well.
Hypothesis: I have gone through the tutorial for this program but have yet to really needed to use this yet.
Trello: I am a pen and paper kind of guy, but I must admit, this app is super helpful. I like how simple it is to use and I plan on using it for other projects outside of my studies.
Twine: This digital storytelling program was rather difficult for me at first. It requires a basic understanding of coding and I have absolutely no experience with coding at all. We did an online workshop on Thursday and I really struggled to keep up. If fact, I gave up. To my surprise, another prof scheduled the same workshop today, so I was able to give it another shot. After an hour, I was able to create and story and insert images and videos. I am almost finished the story and will upload it once I am satisfied with it.
As for the educational and technological competencies I covered this week, I feel as though I focused on the technological list. I need to spend more time reading about privacy, copyright, and professionalism before I tick those boxes. However, I believe I can check off Social Media, Collaboration, Communication, and Apps for Teaching and Learning because of my use of Twitter, Twine, Trello, and Tweetdeck. I love unintended alliteration.
Until next week,
Phil