#UWinDig 2020

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Join the conversation by using the colloborator module

As educators were constantly on the rise of exploring new things not only to better our knowledge but to extend and grasp the knowledge of our students. We all have different skills to offer and different literacies that were going to learn. From a pedagogical point of view, it’s very important to have that open education for everyone. With the collaborator module we can do just that. This module gives not only educators but individuals with the same interest the chance to join this sort of network and collaborate on new information. Having this technology and social media platforms give the creation of PLN’s.

A PLN stands for Personal Learning Network. A network is based on different sorts of resources all coming from one center we can call it and they telecommunicate between each other to collaborate. There’s this really good book written by David Weinbergur called “Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room” and in his book he explains that as our society is changing were moving away from just getting these answers from books but more towards using these platforms and connecting with educators to get answers. David adds that now on these platforms we now have no limits to search.

As we examine this topic of collaborating on information there are two different ways to do so; as someone who is looking to join the conversation on a specific topic that’s called being a participate but we learned from our Powtoon that we can also build our own PLN to create a new conversation on something we feel everyone should know about.

According to the Online Learning and Distance Education Resources; Wenger explains three concepts when talking about PLN’s “Domain: a common interest that connects and holds together the community. Community: a community is bound by the shared activities they pursue (for example; meetings and discussions) around their common domain and thirdly Practice: members of a community of practice are practitioners; what they do informs their participation  in the community; and what they learn from the community affects what they do”

A common platform that is on the rise for educational purposes is Twitter, this platform is the fast and efficient social media to update on our personal life. On Twitter, we are able to follow other accounts, like, retweet, tweet, and quote a tweet that we need on our timeline. By using any kind of hashtag, we are about to classify different types of conversations that millions of people are talking about around the world. For educators this platform is perfect because we are able to connect on different topics and with the video by Alec Couros “Using Twitter Effectively in Education” were able to learn more about this.  

What are you drawn too?

For this assignement I decided to use Piktochart and creat a process like, step by step infograph.

Students are drawn to learn new things but learning something new means lots of questions. Ashley Hincks states in her article “Students I work with assume that digital media is: drag-and-drop, a series of well-laid out, linear, and standard steps; and a guaranteed working product at the end with little risk of failure” (Hincks). Her statement is exactly what students were taught to do. We had to follow the rubric and meet the criteria and expectations. Usually based on what the rubric states and what the teacher has asked the students to do, things should be clear. However, the small details are still the things that we concentrate the most on. We follow the checklist to make sure we have everything; it states in the article, students tend to ask, “What font do I use?” “Is that right?” “What’s my next step?” this type of learning has been embedded in our learning process since we were young.

Fast forward into the future, the way of learning is changing. Students are given more freedom on how they want to present their work. Many would think having more freedom and creativity would benefit the students on their learning process, but it only makes them think about it more because they do not believe it is correct. More and more technology is becoming our educational learning platform. By teaching student that there is not only one good answer, it sets them in a better direction for learning and applying their knowledge inside and outside the classroom. We know that technology is everything and that it is everywhere. When we were kids, some of us played with LEGOS. You had the children who followed the exact instructions and then you had the children who dumped the pieces and made something of their own. “Amy Collier points out, building LEGO without directions can invite openness, creativity, and agency”. There is no difference between LEGO’s and the new teaching method. This way of technology sets the tone to turn students into makers, creators and speakers (Hincks). 

I hope that some day when I’m a teacher I’ll be able to incoorporate all the new technologies and tools into my classroom. Giving my students a sense of self and worth, giving them the chance to be able to express themselves in their own work.

• Heick, Terry. “4 Tips For Transitioning Your Classroom To Digital Media.” TeachThought, 28 Aug. 2017, https://www.teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/4-tips-for-transitioning-your-classroom-to-digital-media/.
• Hinck, Ashley, et al. “Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom.” Hybrid Pedagogy, 29 Mar. 2018, http://hybridpedagogy.org/digital-ghosts-modern-classroom/.