Rachel's Learning Adventure

But I don't anymore! Ok, just kidding. I definitely do. I've always worried that if I were to have a proper dinner party, it would be the wildest mix of people and I'm not totally sure they would all get along. It's nice to have a term that captures what this feeling really is. But on my socials, I don't have that fear anymore because I have deleted a lot of people, and I won't accept requests from people who would make me feel like I have to limit my personality or my personal beliefs. I was just doing some Googling on context collapse, and I found this article from Rewire , and I really resonated with this section: "Paring down your network is a way to fight against context collapse and the sense of loneliness we             get from being online. You'll feel more comfortable expressing yourself if you know who your         followers are."  And for me, that is so true. I'm not interested in being Facebook friends with di...

 So if you're reading this as part of the Jigsaw activity, some key points to know about PLEs, as discussed by Dabbagh and Kitsantas article Personal Learning Environments, social media, and self-regulated learning  are:  It's a new construct in e-learning literature that is rooted in social media and is gaining traction as an effective tool for students to self-regulate their learning.  PLEs "are built on externally hosted (in-the-cloud) web 2.0 tools and services.  One of the main tenets of PLEs is that they enable students to not only self-regulate their learning, but use existing tools and communities to essentially "package" their learning in a way that makes sense.  PLEs allow for greater personalization and ownership A nice way to integrate formal and informal learning  A key feature of PLEs is learners creating, and subsequently developing, an online identity where the environment itself helps the learner cue in to what is being shared and with...

 I'm feeling a little stuck on this. I want to do the full version of the project, but I'm having a hard time identifying communities. I want something that I am actually interested in, that has a fair amount of user interaction week to week. I don't have a Reddit, but I do find myself accessing Reddit communities for things like skincare recommendations etc. I'm toying with the idea of joining two different Reddit groups, both for current TV shows. I think that would help ensure that there's enough activity, and it would be something I am genuinely interested in and have a lot of thoughts. Plus, I already belong to communities that address my other interests like cooking, plants, dogs, etc.  I've been watching Under the Banner of Heaven, and the finale is airing this upcoming week (which would be Week 1 of the project), and I'm willing to bet that it will generate discussion for at least another week after it's airing. I also just started watching Obi-W...

 I'm enjoying this process a lot more than I initially thought I would. It's really refreshing to be able to share my thoughts and ideas however I want, in whatever format makes sense to me. I like the optional discussion board as well, but I prefer this, because I can also engage when and how I best see fit. I'm also really enjoying logging in to see if anyone has interacted with my blog. I look forward to the comments, and I like knowing that I'm putting out a little of content that people find interesting.  Side note: I just finished taking the course on Open Educational Resources, and we spent a lot of time discussing renewable assignments, which, if you're unfamiliar, are assignments that exist to add value back into the world in some way. Whereas a lot of assignments are completed, graded, and discarded, renewable assignments continue on past their due date. I really loved the idea, so it's cool to have this blog as a living example. 

So I really have a bee in my bonnet about digital natives. I realized after reading the Prensky article that I've been dealing with the idea of digital natives my whole teaching career; I didn't know it at the time. I really feel, based on my personal experiences, that labeling generations as digital natives and then assuming that technology is the answer for everything is really shortsighted. This is why some of the readings for this week that pushed back against digital nativism really stuck with me, especially the Kirschner & De Bruyckere article. Kids can't multi-task. I can't even multi-task effectively, and there's so much we still don't know about education. Education, as a whole, is still a very young field. We have established best practices, but those change over time too. So in the context of that, digital nativism is just one more way for teachers to fail at their jobs. I touched on this in the discussions for this week, but what I didn't men...

 This chapter from Networked is pretty much exactly what you think it is. Networked families are closer because of their use of ICTs. These ICTs allow for almost instantaneous sharing, allowing families to connect through texting, emails, and various forms of social media. I really love that the book includes a chapter on Networked families, because I feel like there are a lot of stereotypes floating around in popular culture about how technology drives wedges between families: the teenager who won't socialize, the "loveless" couple who go out to dinner and stare at their phones the whole time etc. We've all seen the stereotypes, but what I love about this chapter is that it basically shows that technology use in a Networked family is just a reflection of dynamics that already exist there. In families or partnerships where strong relationships exist, ICTs magnify that relationship. This has certainly been true of my own family and my marriage. My sister and I are usua...

 So I've never had a Twitter, and I am, on principle, strongly opposed to Elon Musk and I don't want to contribute to any of his empires, but I do want to contribute as thoroughly as I am able to our class discussions and idea sharing. I know I can choose to follow the Twitter without making an account, but I do think it would be fun to have a Twitter and have that aspect of online social interaction with my peers and classmates without the burden of accessing the discussion boards or filtering through the course blogs. Some of my favorite feminist accounts have already migrated themselves off of Twitter even though the bid is still pending and nothing has been finalized yet.  I'm just wondering if anyone else feels a bit conflicted over it? I think I might create it for this course, and then deactivate it at the conclusion of the semester. 

As I was reading Peter and Trudy's story in Networked: The New Social Operating System , I couldn't help but think about how "Networked" societies show up in my own life, and how, for the most part, my experiences echo the claims on the authors in that the online societies I have in my life has been a huge support for me and for others that I know. For example, in 2017 when Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas coast, my brother and sister-in-law lost everything. Their closest circle all rallied together as much as we could, and we did the physical work of helping to clean out the house etc, but they needed financial support. My Aunt, who was living in California at the time, set up a GoFundMe to help them get back on their feet. This GFM account was shared widely, and people that didn't even know our family donated. It was really surreal in a lot of ways. This is the most immediate thing that came to mind, as I feel it echoes Peter and Trudy's experience, but the di...

After looking over the course blog, I've been thinking a lot about what kind of blogger I would like to be. This week, I am very transactional. I'm still getting my feet under me at work, and it was also my one year wedding anniversary this week, so I've been busy! But at my core, I am a relationship first person, and that's the kind of blogger I would like to be. I think the best learning experiences happen when a relationship is being leveraged, and I think one of the best things about the Web 2.0 experience is how it can allow users to leverage their own personalities in order to build relationships with their followers/learners. Web 2.0 allows for so much sharing and customization, that it's really fun to do something as simple as look through what styles my classmates have chosen for their blogs. Who picked big, bold bright colors? Who prefers a more modern, minimal look? Who reached for the stars and created something wildly interesting?    Obviously, one of t...