Rachel's Learning Adventure

 So I know this assignment is due on Sunday, and today is Thursday, and I haven't started yet, but I've been thinking about it NONSTOP and now I've gotten myself to a point where I've thought about it so much that I can't physically act on it (which honestly I feel is pretty common amongst high-achieving severe procrastinators) so I'm going to use this blog post to try and work past my mental blocks around this project. Originally, after we did the Vision Board Pinterest challenge, I couldn't stop thinking about how cool it would be to do that at the end of a novel study as a way to focus on characterization. Like, "pick a character from the xyz novel we just read, and create a board that reflects a theme the character experienced or interacted with over the course of the novel." Which, I still love that idea. But, then I couldn't decide what novel I would want to use, because obviously the kiddos would need to be able to stretch the assignment...

 Alright y'all, this is really just a space today where I'm trying to work out exactly what my personal learning network is, and which learning I am talking about. I think I am going to focus mine on my professional learning, so after watching the video that Dr. Dennen shared over PLNs, I really just asked myself, "Ok, if I had something I really wanted to figure out how to do in Storyline, where would I go? What communities would I tap into? What tools/resources/people are at my disposal?" And what I came up with, is that I think my PLN, especially right now, is comprised of Linkedin (I follow a lot of e-learning specialists on there and have definitely utilized the Linkedin learning courses to learn new skills as well as belonging to a couple instructional design groups, E-learning heroes, an FSU Instructional Design group I am part of, my work colleagues, and my husband, who is also an instructional designer. I think this pretty much covers it. On another note, I h...

 Power to the teachers! I think we're really seeing a rise on movements that I would consider "Eduresistance," especially since the Fall of 2020 when many teachers were unsafely forced back into the classroom. Although I left the classroom in 2021, I am still part of a lot of groups on Facebook that are part of resistance movements: how to better incorporate culturally responsive pedagogy, how to advocate for yourself in the classroom, groups focused on helping to secure raises for teachers. On Instagram, there are so many accounts for educators who are trying to leave the profession, which I would argue is another form of resistance. I really appreciate that  Thapliyal, N. (2018) acknowledges that 1). more voices do not equal to more action and 2). relying solely on digital resistance creates power imbalances over whose voices get heard and who is actually doing the work. Also, I can't help but think that digital eduresistance, or at least the ability to make it look...

 So I spent a lot of time this week going down the rabbit hole of resources offered on Google Earth education, particularly Google Voyager, which offers interactive guided tours, 360 views, and even some interactive features like quizzes depending on which resources you access. I know that Nearpod offers some 360 tours, but from what I remember, they aren't nearly as cool as what Google Voyager is offering! Google Earth education also has some built-in lesson plans and classroom activities, and it would just be such a cool way for teachers to incorporate more technology in their class in a way that is meaningful and actually fully utilizes the technology. Since I'm always looking at these tools through my ELA brain, I was also thinking about how cool it would be to be able to study setting and have students actually look at the places they are reading about, and maybe consider how it has changed over time etc. Anyway, it's a super cool tool that I had no idea about, so I sp...

 I really enjoyed reading this article from  Yang, C., & Chang, Y. S. (2012), probably because it confirmed my personal feelings on blogging in a higher education setting. Now that we're 10 weeks in, I really feel that I, and my peers, get out of blogging what we put into it. On weeks where I'm not feeling particularly inspired, I won't read the blogs at all. Not because I'm not interested in what my peers have to say, but because I'm just lacking the motivation to do it. I also agree with the results of the study, wherein being able to comment on and interact with other bloggers resulted in a more positive attitude than just blogging alone. Knowing that my peers might be visiting my blog is kind of an incentive to me to put ideas out there that I think are interesting, or that leave space for someone to respond to. I agree with the overall idea that, " comments seem to help foster online peer discussion, enhance interaction, and sharing culture." From...

 OK, I'm just going to say it. I hate Slack. I hate the way it looks, I hate all the channels, I hate the standalone chats. I just don't like it as a platform because it feels very overwhelming to me. My company is basically a learning and development company, so we are contracted out to different clients. Our biggest client uses Slack, but my actual company uses Microsoft Teams. There's always 1,000 things going on in the Slack channels, and even when I collapse certain channels and mute others, I feel like I am hyper aware that there are things happening in there that I need to read and/or be part of. I much prefer the simplicity of Microsoft Teams, although I understand that for larger organizations, a platform like Slack is probably easier to manage when there are multiple ongoing projects across multiple teams.  I do like Trello, and I feel like it's a great project management tool for providing a high level overview of projects. We put our projects in Trello so th...