Contributing to Learning
This week I decided to do my blog post a bit differently than just writing. Today, I am going to be talking about my experiences within a video, with a script and necessary links attached. I was asked by my prof, “How have you contributed to the learning of others?” This is something I felt I excelled at, as I was continually commenting on classmates blogs, Tweets, Google Community comments and asking lots of questions within these comments. To begin, I am going to discuss how I helped contribute to the learnings of others on twitter which is a site I was familiar with before this class, that I enjoy greatly which enabled me to help others.
Every day I would tweet at least five times a day about what I was doing, resources I found for education and technology, retweeting, replying to tweets and giving shout-outs to classmates that I thought were doing well with their learnings. Another way I felt I contributed to my classmates' learning was through #saskedchat, where I moderated the first chat of our class. From then on, it seemed me and various other classmates took part in other ed chats, where we were able to connect with one another and contribute to the chat. We would ask each other questions and comment on our thoughts about certain topics. I participated in a total of 8 chats, in which I believe 6 of them, my classmates were also apart of. I also want to add that I would try to share memes throughout the week that made me laugh to not only help myself but others as well to see learning can and is fun! One last thing I did was make polls every once and a while where classmates and other followers could give their input towards a topic and comment if they needed (something that I forgot to add to my video).
Next, I ensure commenting and be apart of the Google Community was my next step. On this site I shared different resources I found that I thought would help my classmates either see a different perspective on a topic or to help them with a certain skill. I also continually commented on my classmates' questions to try to help them to the best of my ability. I often found for myself, that the Google Community seemed quiet at times, so I wanted to ensure my classmates did not feel like they were left in the dust. Finally, when commenting on peoples questions, if they did not understand what I was saying, I ensured to offer them a screencast, so they would clearly see what I am talking about. But nevertheless, I did not have to do this.
Finally, commenting on my classmates' blogs was a significant component of this course. On average, I would comment on at least ten peoples blog a week. I would go to our Voices of EDTC300 website and slowly go down the list, commenting on blogs. This was a challenge at first because I completely had to motivate myself to go onto these blogs as there were no notifications for when someone posted, and these posts required lots of reading, which I was unsure about. Over time, I found a routine that worked well for myself which was setting a time aside throughout the week to dedicate my time to these blogs because I knew it would be beneficial for my classmates' learning. My comments include questions, things I thought they were doing well at and trying to motivate them if they thought they were struggling.
Within my own blog posts, I ensured to make my blogs as reader-friendly as possible. I provided various links to articles and videos that I felt enhanced learning. I also asked many questionings within my posts, in hopes the readers would contribute. I think this was a way I contributed to my classmates learning because they had to critically think about these questions and dig deep. I also ensured these blogs were shared on Twitter, so my classmates were able to access on them on another social media platform.
I feel I positively contributed to peoples learning throughout this course. I think through my many comments on various social media platforms helped them to think critically and helped them to stay motivated and on track.
