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Taking this class, I've learned a lot. The two texts we read for the class The Connected Educator and Untangling the Web have introduced me to a lot of tools that I wouldn't previously have used, and certainly some brand new concepts, along with new ways to use old ones.

Twitter is a social media platform, mostly. But when using it to further your PLN, it becomes really valuable. Twitter allows you to make a ton of connections, without the formality of email--or the occasional feeling of solicitation it has. You can easily jump in and join conversations by tweeting at professionals in your field, and it's a really easy way to stay updated on what's going on. Twitter is great for online networking. Once you set up a good profile, you stick the link to your personal website and/or blog in your bio, and people can find you easily. The world is so connected nowadays, and this is one of the best ways to do it.

Blogging is fun for me because I'm already a writer. It's simply just a new platform. Doing this has kind of inspired me to go back to a previous blog I kept, but revamp it. For me, blogging is a way to hone my craft, but in an alternative way (because I am primarily a prose and poetry writer). Alternatively, it's a good way to create a writing portfolio. Many editing and writing jobs ask for writing samples, and you can often just link them to a blog. This has been useful for me in the past.

Through this class, I created a personal website that will be a great addition to my resume. It showcases some of the work I've done in class (using cool tools like Emaze), lists some recommendations from professionals (about me personally, and my writing). Eventually I plan to get a domain name that is simply my name, so I can put it on business cards. I think the addition of recommendations is a good look, because other people are sounding off.

Some of my favorite classes this semester involved AR and VR. I loved the use of ZooKazam as a learning tool. I can definitely see it working really well in classrooms. I also really liked doing the social media etiquette presentation. Mine was on something I was really familiar with. Coming out of that class, I think I had a healthy fear of what I put online, and what that meant to future employers.

Overall, I think this class has enhanced my digital profile and given me more awareness of my use of social media.

Building Websites and Staying Connected

There are many ways to build a website nowadays, and without coding. Coding is very hard and tedious, so this is a great thing to learn! I started making websites when I was younger, probably about ten, little things about my dogs and my various interests. Back in the day, I used the now-defunct websites Freewebs and Piczo to expand my online presence. Now, there are much more advanced tools.

Building a website now is almost essential to today's budding professional. A URL with your name on it is one of the easiest things to put on a business card, along with your name and social media tags. You no longer need a fancy tagline on your business card--just your URL and social media handles. As you hand it out, other professionals have places to find you. If you have a well crafted website, your job offers may increase exponentially.

It is very important to have a page about you, somewhere to find your resume, and a link to your social media handles. This is a great article on crafting your about me page, giving you step by step directions on how to use it. It's a nice checklist to have to make sure you don't forget anything when writing about yourself. Keep your website simple and easy to navigate, and also make sure the design is aesthetically pleasing, and fitting to your field. And please, for the love of god, stay away from comic sans.

Wix and Weebly are both great tools to use if you don't know a lot about coding. They'll let you drag and drop everything you, and are pretty easy to navigate. This is a great tutorial on how to use Weebly, for those that are choosing the latter of the tools. For those choosing the former, there's a great list of tutorials for Wix over at this link.

In the concluding chapter of The Connected Educator, it is stressed that teachers need to be adaptive to be relevant in the classroom. Students won't pay attention with ancient technology. A teacher must become a learner of technology to teach it. Learning is a continuous cycle, especially for educators. There are four core concepts to becoming a connected educator: knowledge, pedagogy, connections, capacity. Knowledge is important because it furthers learning, and the most important aspect of this is nurturing awareness. Let students know where to get the things they are looking for. Pedagogy is about instilling passion for learning within your students, and also encouraging them to take risks. Connections encourages students to make PLNs, and teaching them how to do so. Capacity is important because it gives space to allow students to learn, and educators to teach. If connected education networks create more capacity, there is more learning.

Web Tools and Website Makers

Social media is taking over! But we already knew that, didn't we? It's even coming into education, and that's a good thing! It's a more relatable way to connect with students and get them to interact with the material presented. Here are some example of a few.

TodaysMeet is a tool that essentially lets you create a temporary chatroom. In the chapter, it mentioned using the website as a way to facilitate discussion during a movie, and I think that's a great idea. It gives students the option to view at their own accord, but also contribute to class, and let them get participation points without disturbing everyone else. TodaysMeet is really simple, but ultimately a powerful tool used in any situation. In a more professional setting, it would be wonderful for an easy way to set up a remote meeting, especially because you can print out the transcript later on.

Skype is a more personal networking tool. It lets you communicate with people via video or voice chat, and is focused essentially on peer-to-peer communication. I've used Skype in a professional manner to conference with my internship adviser on days she wasn't readily available, and it's been essential in helping us communicator.

Branching out from peer to peer, Edmodo is a wonderful social media platform for teachers to interact with their students. It allows teachers to create a class account, and send out student sign-up links connecting to the class. Through it, a teacher can administer simple tests, and the website even grades it for the teacher as well. It's pretty much like Facebook for the classroom, but with all the security of a teacher controlling it.

For microblogging, we have Twitter, which most people are familiar with. However, Twitter isn't simply useful for sharing your favorite memes or keeping up with your favorite celebrities. I use Twitter for this class, in order to keep up with what's going on in my field (publishing and comic books) and interact with professionals. It's a way to get up and close with those you may not typically get to interact with otherwise, all with the brevity of a hundred and forty characters.

In class, we talked about platforms one can use to make a professional website. It's the easiest and most efficient way to have someone look you up, especially when it's tagged on your business card. It's advised that your URL is your first and last name, if you decide on the domain. Some of the tools explored were Weebly and Wix, websites that are ultimately very similar, and very easy to use. As someone familiar with coding, I prefer to design my own websites, but these are very easy tools for someone who might want to put something together quickly, or someone who doesn't necessarily have the experience! Ultimately, it's good to get yourself out there in a professional way, and this is a good start.

Social Media: the good, the bad

Last Wednesday in class, we presented on social media etiquette. A lot of the presentations surprised me with how petty some of the firings were! It just shows you have to be really careful about how you present yourself on social media, especially if you're a teacher. Teachers getting fired for simply posting photos with alcohol, or mild profanity, is crazy. However, that simply is the way life works, and when you're a public figure, you really have to consider what parts of your life you expose to the public.

My subject was Tony Harris, a comic book artist who went on a very long rant about his disapproval of women who cosplay. His rant was laced with profanity, sexism and ultimately unleashed a stream of bad press. In his rant, he said that very few women actually like comics, and only dress up in skimpy cosplay to titillate nerdy men and inflate their egos. The result of this has been an overwhelming consensus of, "I'm never buying his stuff" or "I'm never working with him again". This occurred almost two years ago, and he's yet to get any significant work--although he is selling original covers on his website for numbers in the thousands.

The rant itself.

In chapter five of the Connected Educator, there are a lot of tools shown that can connect educators with their students. It stresses the importance of bookmarking everything to keep organized, especially in terms of social bookmarking. Social bookmarking websites like Digg and Delicious are good for keeping organized. For less refined social bookmarking, reddit is always fun, especially with subreddits (which basically are microforums) like r/AskHistorians and r/ExplainLikeImFive when you want to learn about new things.

To ultimately keep everything you're following in one place, you may want to consider an RSS Reader. It keeps all of your content together, so you don't have to jump around the web to get your news, but still have it personalized. RSS Readers were always something I had heard were useful, but never fully investigated. As someone who used to be really into fashion, and keep up on comic book journalism as well, it was really difficult for me to keep track of everything. I tried things like Bloglovin, which helped for fashion blogs, and feedly, which helped for everything else--and kept it organized--but ultimately I may finally look into using an RSS feed to keep my content all together.

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

In a little under two weeks, the Oculus Rift will be released to consumers. Everywhere, people are rejoicing because we are one step closer to integrating with computers. Or, something like that. Either way, virtual reality is, well, a reality. And if you get motion sickness, there's always Augmented Reality to take a step back.

An example of ZooKazam

AR is an enhancement. It isn't a complete immersion, something you have to strap to your head to block out the entire world. Apps like ZooKazam are being used in the classroom to enhance learning. After all, what group of third graders wouldn't be amazed by seeing a rendering of a zoo animal in their classroom? ZooKazam basically lets you set down a target (either one given out by ZooKazam, or one line an every day object like a dollar bill) and project an animal onto it. Through the screen of a phone or laptop, you can see the animal in your vicinity. It a really great party trick, if anything else!

This article speaks on how AR and VR are great options for training in the workplace, especially in high-risk fields. What better way to know that your employees are following safety regulations, than to put them in an immersive simulation? VR is being used for training oil rig workers, and engineers. It can given a little extra help as well, creating diagrams to point out important things in the field.

The main reason VR and AR aren't so mainstream are because they aren't so cost-effective, but those costs seem to be lowering as the technology develops. Google seems to be the one trying to save the day here, offering Google Cardboard. This article gives some reasons as to the benefits of Google Cardboard, among them being the versatility of the shells you can purchase, the price-point, and the fact that almost anyone can use it. Google Cardboard is on the rise. However, it certainly isn't as immersive as the Oculus Rift or other premium VR. Google Cardboard is ultimately the budget version of VR.

Overall, AR and VR are good things going forward in the future, and will help us progress as a society.

Digital Storytelling

Sometimes, you get sick of PowerPoint. Let's be honest, it's kind of boring, and prettying it up takes more effort than most people like. Sometimes the transitions can get too flashy, as well. Is there a point where your presentation can turn to digital storytelling? It all depends on the tools you use.

Animoto is a popular platform. It basically gives you access to little characters that are pre-voiced, and can say whatever you want. The free version has a thirty second limit for all videos, but there is a thirty dollar upgrade for educators. This article talks about how it's good for educators. I personally believe it would be a really good way to get younger kids to interact with material they otherwise might find boring, but the article also brings up some pretty good points. One of them being the fact that there's a free account for educators. It also mentions how you can narrow the visibility of your digital stories to just your classroom, which is great for working with younger children. Another thing mentioned that really sounded good to me was the fact that it has controlled material, so you don't have to worry about kids trying to put weapons in their stories.

Another fun tool for education is called Voki. It's basically a web application that lets you use an avatar to convey messages. It's really just a cute little tool that stimulates engagement. The free option gives you pretty limited faces, in terms of characters, but you can always upgrade to the paid version, which is a yearly subscription. This article mentions using it when you have a substitute teacher, which I think is really good so the kids in your class feel that you are still present. While not really the greatest on your own, it can be a wonderful way to spice up your PowerPoint, without being too much. This article gives you a tutorial on how to put a Voki in your PowerPoint.

So those are some tools you can use to spice up your presentations, and engage your students. Feel free to comment, or contact me on twitter (@gabrielleasmith) if you have any thoughts!

Presentations and Cyberbullying

In the third chapter of Untangling the Web, the authors pull together a list of useful resources for presenting. In it, there are some popular favorites--like Prezi. I've seen Prezi used a lot in class, and it's quite impressive, especially when compared to your typical powerpoint. It has a lot of pizzazz, a lot of ornamentation that makes a presentation more interesting. Also in the chapter is Poll Everywhere, which gives teachers the opportunity to, well, poll everywhere. It's really helpful because you can do an instant poll, and integrate it into lessons and presentations as well.

TED talks are a different kind of presentation. Of course, they're actual talks, instead of academic presentations. However, they always have some sort of message behind them. Monica Lewinsky is probably a familiar name to most--known as a former president's mistress, the reason he got impeached, but not removed. She did a talk on cyberbullying, calling herself patient zero of such harassment. In it, she talks about how her story was the first one to burst onto the internet scene before it came out on traditional media. Later, she accounts other victims of cyberbullying--Tyler Clementi, especially, who killed himself after being publicly outed by his roommate, and ridiculed online.

Things spread on the internet like wildfire now, and Lewinsky was the first victim. Now with social media, there's a lot of talk, and with cameras everywhere, news spreads fast. Lewinsky asks that we do not feed into this culture of devouring each other, that we do not give more clickable dollars to gossip websites, and I agree. It's like buying a terrible tabloid with stories you know that are wrong, ones that claim celebrities are terrible parents just due to one unfavorable photo. The culture surrounding the internet has fostered public humiliation to a ridiculous extent, and everyone needs to take their part to stop it.