Hello there,
Today I chose to do my multimedia reflection on the Jacobsen article/Jenkins video, which discussed the idea of incorporating participatory digital methods into the classroom. I personally found these sources quite useful because although we have discussed how to incorporate technology into classrooms, I sometimes failed to see the benefit of it or the extent to which it can be useful. Therefore, they were extremely helpful in providing me with some context on just how effective incorporating technology in the classroom can be. One thing that really stood out was that nearly everything that was claimed within it was backed up by facts, with the majority of them dealing with the idea of integrating these student based/technological methods into the classroom. Overall, it seems as if allowing students to fully utilize the technology they are given, collaborate with themselves and their teachers, and become heavily involved in projects online while interacting with learners/resources on the web can be extremely beneficial. There is a constant juxtaposition participant focused learning to that of the traditional recall and regurgitate method often employed within schools, which I believe was an important contrast to make in order to truly understand how kids effectively learn. Collaboration was heavily stressed throughout the article, which I believe is important to make the most out of the learning opportunities that present themselves within a classroom. Without this aspect of constantly learning and bouncing ideas off each other, things would definitely stagnate quickly within the realm of education. These resources are definitely something that all teachers should read/watch to get a better grasp of how to get more out of their students through technology and provide themselves with a variety of resources that can assist them in the process, including Galileo Network and Second Life. It is definitely something that I will personally attempt to explore more throughout my career to give my students the best learning experience possible.
I chose to do a mindmap because it is something I’ve never really done outside of some sketches in various classrooms throughout my learning career. I enjoyed using this platform (Coggle) for the most part, but I found that it was extremely difficult to get all the information that I wanted into the mindmap. There was a lot of stuff covered within the article, so fitting it within a series of branches was a bit challenging, but I found the process rewarding in the end. However, I do feel that branching the various topics covered within the article made it easier to collect my thoughts than if I had to simply summarize everything that the author talked about. I also added some visual aids to get across some main points that I wanted to stick with whoever happens to see it. Overall, I would recommend the platform for anyone looking to escape their comfort zone and try something new, especially considering the fact that it is not as time consuming as some of the other platforms. Without further ado, here is my mindmap! Enjoy, and feel free to give me any feedback to get those marks in.
