Collecting all of my work into one place allowed me to see what work I value and how many map pins I have placed out in the wide world. I chose Weebly as my display case since I was famliar with the program and it has the professional look I wanted to model. I added all the social media icons I currently have accounts on, despite my lack luster showing on some (Twitter, Instagram). I went back and forth about Twitter and what account I would link. Most of my Twitter activity is posting events for my school and my personal account is mainly for me to gather resources from experts I follow. I ended up connecting both accounts. I linked a variety of blog reflections on topics I found interesting, creative, or show my new learning through Wilkes assignments. The vast majority of my is docuemnted in video and images. I chose to create my portfolio page in sections; professional bio, work with teachers, work with students, and personal learning. All sections truly represents my career as an digital learner and educator. I encourage visitors to read and listen closely to the message of creativity and collaboration my work samples represent. I believe in communicating and creating with technology and it has enourmous benefits for students, personally, educationally and eventually professionally. I love sharing my own work as well as my students but I am more careful about what is portraied online and what it represents of a students true self. I continue to struggle with the amount of information I post for the world to see. With identity theft, scams, negative and predatory behavior, I find it difficult to feel secure about the place I take within the world wide web. My view of the positive things a post can do for a student or its audicene, is tainted by the cyberbullying and technology addiction I am asked to help parents understand before innovation leaves them in the dark ages. Since having my own family, I have become more gaurded and thoughtful with each post and upload, only wanting to have a positive effect on their newly formed digital dossier. Creating this landing place for my work allows me some control over the message Amy Dent will send to the world.
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Update- 12/9/16 Found a way to show video
First thing I need to say about Live Webinars is how much I respect the engineers and presenters at the other end of the connection! I tested and tested and tested equipment, browsers, connections, software; you name it I tried it out. I never knew producing a LIVE web broadcast would be so trying. My biggest trouble came with plugins, loading, and updating software. I about never got a Java plugin to talk to my MAC. Through this challenge I learned about plugins and browser compatiabilty. It is true, you can find anything if you Google it so I was fortunate to figure out that my district was blocking a plugin download and that I needed to use Safari instead of Chrome for some instances. I only have access to district monitored devices so some software is restricted or needs a systems administrator to approve the downloading of software. Waiting on IT approval was time consuming but I now understand my district approval process and it connected me with an IT professional willing to explain the process. I am making all this sound painstaking but it was a valuable learning experience through failure. Under normal circumstances, I would use Google Hangout to produce a Webinar but I am already familiar with that product and wanted to try something new. I also had trouble with recording the Google Hangout in YouTube so I chose Webex to make the webinar magic happen. Liked Webex a lot. It was super simple and had a recorder embeded in the software so that was one less window to worry about. I tested out both ways to start an online event, start now and schedule. For the actual event, I used the scheduled method and sent invites to teachers who had missed my introduction to our Twitter Challenge during the regular scheduled meeting. Free version of Webex uses its own player so I am unable to post the recording. I have included the presentation slides.
I went looking for the perfect Webinar this week. To me the perfect professional development webcast is no more than 30 minutes long, between the hours of 3pm-6pm, and I leave with a laundry list of sites, apss, and gagets to test out. This week I attended a webinar hosted by SimpleK12 called Mobile Apps for Crafating Special Holiday Gifts. It began at 6pm and last exactly 30 minutes, including time for questions. Below is a tidbit of the live webinar I attended. This webinar was presented by Shelly Terrell who had a long list of accomplishments in educational technology and classroom experience. Just from the introduction, I knew this was a professionally produced, well reheared webinar that I was going to enjoy. The presenter used a slide format to share her resources and expanded her thoughts and helpful hints on projects, without trailing off the topic. She was sure to cover all device types, software platforms, and holiday celebrations. I took notes from the presentation and now have a page full of ideas, Apps, and websites to use with students this holiday season. This particular presenation would not be entirely appropriate for a class setting, as the material was geared toward teacher instruction , but students might watch it to find resources or project ideas if given an independent assignment where the teacher allowed them to create anything using any of the technology resources presented. Professional learning through webinar is a favorite tool for myself but I find scheduling a live webinar difficult. I tend to choose archived presentations for my presonal and classroom needs. You can better share a great webinar with students if it is archived and show it with multiple classes throughout the day.
I created a Twitter challenge for teachers to take place the 12 days before holiday break. The purpose of this challenge to help teachers grow their PLC and gain a comfort with using social media tools to celebrate their classroom successes. There are two challenge posted here. The first is the MGM 12 days of Twitter Challenge and a Twitter Bingo Board that will be introduced in January.
I used Smore to create the invitation so I could embed to the Google form to collect Twitter handles of all participates. I learned of a new tool called Canva and used that to create the daily challenge posters to post and email out each day. I used Google Drawings to create the bingo board so I could share it with others in my PLC. Thanks to Becky Steurrys, Digital Learning Coach in my PLC, for sharing her Canvas and Google Drawing templates for this project. I only steal from the best , Becky! For the prizes, I have been asking admin and district office professionals to check closets for conference freebie's, calling business partners, asking PTO to donate a school shirt or Tervis, and crossing my fingers the Chick-fil-a will provide two Cow calendars for the grand prize. So far I have a pair of Google Cardboard, wireless mouse, and two mac keyboard covers that tell you all the shortcut key strokes. Hearing "No" does not hurt me. You don't know someone's spirit for giving if you don't share your need with them. Don't be afraid of a "no" and keep smiling, keep smiling, keep smiling. :-) MGM Twitter Bingo
I created a Twitter Bingo board for teachers wanting to expand their PLC and participate on their own schedule. I worked to incorporate classroom celebrations, following education professionals and organizations, and participation in Twitter chat opportunities. I am most excited about the school edchat I will host with my administrator. This Twitter chat will be in place of having our weekly PD meeting.
My final day of the Instagram venture had me investigating video posts and the fantastic find of.....the embed code! How awesome is that?! I was able to embed my short Thanksgiving vacation video to my blog. I like that I can capture video, as well as, images with my portable computer (a.k.a. my cell phone) and then collate all those common media into a webpage using embed code.
I still lean more to the consumer side of social media than the creator side. This social experiment gave me the opportunity to learn a new tool, decide my audience and purpose for using this in my life or classroom. I can see myself moving more toward an Instagram user and less Facebook for family connections. Twitter is my place for classroom and professional connections. Whether it be a funny video that makes me laugh, an inspirational quote to focus my students, a link to a professional reading, or the opportunity to share amazing students work with the world, I appreciate social media platforms for providing the resources I need in my social, emotional, and professional life. With Instagram, images can be left to stand alone and speak for themselves. This leaf IS as big as your head.
Think I have decided to make Instagram my personal platform for friends and family. I will keep Facebook and Twitter my professional posts and PLC connection. This trip to the antique store while on vacation had me seeing tons of older technology; record players, radios, manual push mowers, and bag phones!
I learned about an app called Layout. I kept seeing all these posts with a collage of photos and I could not find that feature in Instagram and did some investigation (asked an online instagram friend). Layout for Instagram is SUPER easy to use and integrates right into the app via the camera roll of the phone. This is Oconaluftee national park off the Blue Ridge Parkway in the Great Smokie Mountains of North Carolina.
I am still struggling with how I want to use this account, personal or professional. Today I posted my "Little Bits" enjoying lunch with our time away from school. I rarely post my children and never post their names. In the spirit of the assignment I am posting in all areas of my life and reflecting on the purpose and audience.
Side note on this photo: I decided to play around with the filter functions because my youngest was having an allergic reaction when the photo was taken and her face was covered in red blotches. This filter worked well. :-) It is Tuesday and we are out for a 3 day break. This picture shows the holiday traffic already backing up I-20 but I don't care. Bring on the crisp air of the mountains and a platter of cornbread dressing! I am finding Instagram is very easy to use, take picture, write comment, post. What I am learning is that Instagram is primarily app based. I thought it would be much like Facebook or Twitter and have all the same functions for both web-based and app versions of Instagram. That is not the case. My goal today was to find the privacy settings and I approached it via the web. The settings were limited on the web but the app had it all. Blocking users, turning account privacy on, and linking other social media accounts were all under the settings gear in the app.
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Amy DentInstructional Coach, tech geek, news junkie, and passionate about learning. Archives |