Summary of Learning

I have finally arrived at my last assignment and this has been a whirlwind of a course to say the least! This was my first fully-online course and my first 6-week course (other than summer classes in undergrad). It has definitely taught me a lot about time management since I am teaching full-time and also taking another class this semester.

My biggest take-aways from the topics of this class were:

• The importance of incorporating technology into the classroom.
• Social media in the classroom, more specifically, the power of blogging in the classroom.
• The benefits of having students create eBooks to create texts of any genre.

My biggest take-aways from #UAtnpcl were:

• The ability to connect with others from all over.
• The ability to connect with classmates and share ideas and resources.
• The ability to post assignments and share them with not only the professor, but with classmates and other followers.
• The benefits of using hashtags.

During this course, I already started using transliterate practices in my classroom and hope to do so more and more as I become more comfortable with this skill and learn more resources to use. I have already started having my students blog and connect with each other through their blogs. I plan to have students learn how to research topics using the Internet and create technology presentations on their learning, rather than always creating reports. I am also working on getting the correct cords to be able to connect my iPad to my projector to teach students how to use Book Creator. I only have a personal iPad, so it may take a while for every student to get a turn, but I am looking forward to having students create eBooks. I may start with a class book where every student gets an opportunity to create at least page  independently or with a partner. However, I'd like to get to the place where they also have the opportunity to create their own texts.

This course has truly opened me up to a whole new world of teaching that I know can only improve my teaching abilities and increase student learning. I look forward to continue learning more about TPACK, educational technology, and transliterate practices. I also look forward to continue connecting with other educators through Twitter and Blogger.

Finally, for my Summary of Learning digital artifact, I really wanted the chance to try-out a new tool that I was not already exposed to during this course. When looking at the cool tool options, I came across Visme in the infographic section, which was also a category I had not yet worked with for the Cool Tool Reviews. During this course I loved finding infographics that went along with our weekly topics to include in my blog posts. The reason I chose Visme over the other infographic tools listed was because Visme offered a presentation option that the other tools did not, which really appealed to me for the purpose of this last assignment. You can read about my thoughts on Visme in my Visme creation below!

One thing worth noting that I did not mention in my Visme presentation is that the only negative experience I had while using this tool was that even though I have music selected to play, the music won't play. I played around with the music function for more than a half an hour and also tried to find information from the help page and Google. Every time I would finally get the background music to play, I would publish it and the music would be gone again. Therefore, if you don't hear music, that is why! (Super frustrating!) Any feedback/help would be greatly appreciated!

Below you will find the presentation I created using Visme to display my Summary of Learning. The presentation works best in full-screen mode and you can use the arrows to move through the slides at your own pace!

Here is also the link due to the large file size if your computer is slow to load the presentation above!