Refelection Blog Post

 

This class is up there on my favorites for the ME.D program.   

I feel like I have a better understanding of new media and digital literacies. One of my strengths is that I am opening to new learning along with relearning things that I am familiar with.  It has opened my mind to what is considered literacy and there is much to include within this topic.  One of our first articles that we read was R You Really Reading. This brought up a good debate on what some consider literacy. Even the Ted Talk on gaming just made me think and reflect about all that goes into the practice and culture of gaming. Prior to this class I would never have considered that in the realm of literacy practice. Those chapters in our textbook were the most difficult for me to connect to because I have no background in that participatory culture.  But clearly there is much thought and collaboration that goes into gaming. And as we learned in the Ted talk lots of people are spending time participating in gaming and gaming culture. I think one of my other strengths during the class was in the discussions and using the readings to support my thinking and then learning from everyone’s posts and blogs. For the most part I loved writing the Community Engagement proposal.  I have never done anything like that and once I started with my idea, I got invested in it as if it were real.   

An area that I would like to improve on would be reading more of the discussion posts. I tend to reply to the ones that are posted when I post.  So, if I post early and there are a few then I try to reply to those and get ahead a bit in the module.  Our last assignment was the most difficult for me as a learner. As an educator I have become passionate about being culturally responsive in my work as a teacher and wanted to make a connection culturally responsive teaching and digital storytelling. So, reading more discussion posts will be a goal for me for my Summer Term that is coming up. I need to tighten up my APA citing.  It can get me in trouble sometimes.  Also if we are being honest, there are times when I just want to be done and I don’t have the capacity to think about a topic anymore. When I read the feedback for our last paper and reread my conclusion, it wasn’t stellar.

I signed up for a free digital storytelling webinar for this summer to learn more about how to do that and what it looks like so that I can implement it in my classroom or help other teachers with this literacy practice. Something else I am taking away is the idea of gaming. I know a little about Minecraft but have never played it.  That might be a goal for me.  I know nothing about it, but the kids at my school will be a good resource to use. 

Here is the link.  There are other free ones as well.

https://www.storycenter.org/workshop

Best of luck to everyone.  Hope to be in class again in the summer.