I can’t believe this course is over!  As much as I dreaded it after I read the syllabus the first time, it has flown by and I can confidently say that I learned more (about the subject matter and about myself) in this course than in any of my previous courses.  I have compiled and […]

I can’t believe this is the end of week 7 already. This course (and summer!) has flown by.  I feel like I completed all requirements of the week to the standards.  I was excited to get a chance to go back to a design assignment that I was interested the last time we were required to complete […]

For this week’s story critique I chose a story that, just like with my focal theme article ended up being, was not something that I had originally set out to find.  In keeping with the theme of the reading that I chose to annotate and review for week 7 I started my search looking for […]

This week’s reading was from the National SEED Program in the form of an article written by Dr. Peggy McIntosh about “unpacking the invisible knapsack of white privilege”.  I came to the reading a bit late this week, so it is hard for me to determine if my thoughts and feelings are about the reading itself or […]

I chose this design assignment from the assignment bank this week.  The task was to create a word cloud that encompasses DS106.  I wanted to do this assignment the first time we were asked to complete a design project, but the description suggests that it be completed near the end of the course.  One reason this assignment […]

This week had its ups and downs for me as far as this course goes.  I have been in Philly for the last four days for a wedding that my husband and I were both in, which meant I had to get the majority of the work for the week done before I left. I […]

This week’s reading was Lankshear and Knobel (2011) Ch7: Social Learning, “Push” and “Pull,” and Building Platforms for Collaborative Learning.  The chapter takes a look at the concept of social learning – and the authors take the stance that social learning is truly the only form of authentic learning. “They suggested that by separating learning from ‘authentic’ […]

For this week’s story critique I found a video from the teaching channel that talked about implementing blogging in the classroom.  This was something that I wanted to look a little deeper into since we read about blogging a couple weeks ago, and it happened to be the first video that popped up when I got to […]

For this week’s Assignment Bank Creation I went back to the visual assignments.  We did visual assignments the first week of class, and I chose an assignment that didn’t force me to try anything new.  All I had to do was take a picture and post it. Last week I tried my hand at some […]

I am pretty happy with how this week turned out.  I completed all assignments (although I am realizing now that I never tweeted my daily create from yesterday – will do that after this post!) and I chose a mashup project that took me outside my comfort zone.  I felt more comfortable with the new […]

I stumbled upon this digital story in the form of a prezi as I was searching for articles to supplement this week’s reading.  I can’t tell from the site who the creator is, but I assume she is either someone who is taking a course similar (in content, not participation) to this one and is reporting out […]

This week’s reading was from Jenkins (2008) Afterword: Communities of Readers, Clusters of Practices.  It discussed looking at the new literacies that technology has created as more than  just something that distracts students from their coursework.  The reading suggested that, instead, educators should be embracing these technologies and looking at them as ways to give meaning to […]

The task for this assignment was to mashup a children’s book with another  cultural artifact.  I chose this assignment for a couple of reasons.  For one thing, I have never used any sort of photo editing (besides paint, and I’ve only used that to add text to a picture) and wanted to see what I was capable […]

Week 4 was tough for me – though it had very little to do with the class.  I came down with a stomach virus that took me out for most of the week.  At first I thought that the fact that I was just lying around all week (and actually had someone else take my […]

For this week’s critique I found a video that seems to have been made to reach students in a course in which blogging is discussed (like what seems to be, perhaps, a very dull version of ILT5340).  The professor is giving an overview of blogging in the classroom and the benefits that it can have […]

This week’s reading was Davies and Merchant (2007) Ch8: Looking From the Inside Out: Academic Blogging as New Literacy.  In this reading we explored the world of blogging, from the view of researchers that performed an autoehnographic (new term for me!) study in which they were both the subject and the object.  The researchers constructed their own […]

The goal of this design project was to reduce a movie, story, or event into its basic elements, then take those visuals and reduce them further to simple icons – four of them.  I chose this assignment because it is something that I could see myself having my students do when they have completed a book. […]

It is hard to believe this course is almost halfway over!  At the same time, though, my mindset has changed so much since first receiving the syllabus that it is also hard to believe it has only been three weeks.  I  think one of my greatest improvements this week came in the form of time […]

For this week’s story critique, I steered a little off course.  The video that I will be critiquing doesn’t have much – or anything really – to do with the world of education, other than the fact that I used it to further my own.  While I was reading this week’s chapter on DIY I […]

This week’s reading  was Lankshear and Knobel (2008) Ch1: DIY Media: A Contextual Background and Some Contemporary Themes.  This chapter opens with a discussion revolving around the importance of understanding your students’ engagement with media in building connections to their practices.  Building these connections allows you as a teacher to make sure that you are contributing […]

For this video assignment the task was to take a video of yourself or someone else and finger spell a word or a phrase in Sign Language alphabet and let others guess what you have spelled.  I chose this assignment for a couple of different reasons.  The first being that this next year I will have a student […]

I went into this week with a completely different mindset than last week.  Last week I felt myself thinking there was no way I could succeed in this class, whereas this week my thinking was more along the lines of, “I can do this, but it is going to take a lot of hard work […]

For this week’s story critique I decided to look at a blog dedicated to technology in the classroom.  I found Jenni Levy’s blog on a list of the best educational tech blogs.  Jenni Levy refers to herself as a “reformed chalk and talk teacher” and her blog is dedicated to looking at ways to incorporate technology into educators […]

This week’s reading was chapter 4: New Literacies and Social Practices of Digital Remixing.  The main takeaway I got from reading this chapter is that I need to stop thinking that any aspect of this class will not benefit me as an elementary school teacher.  Before reading this chapter, I thought (or, more accurately, didn’t think […]

For my first Audio Assignment I decided to record the sounds of my day. As a teacher, the sounds of my daily routines sound very different now than they did three weeks ago, which is one reason I wanted to complete this assignment!  I would love to go back and record the sounds of my day during […]

Today’s daily create was completely up to us, which at first glance seemed easy!  Once  I sat down to do something, though, I found myself wishing someone would just tell me what to do.  I decided to play around with a couple of sites that you can use to turn photos or videos into a […]

I am so glad to have week one under my belt!  I started the week STRESSED about this class.  I felt like there was no way I could succeed – I couldn’t even understand the syllabus.  But here we are – I made it!  I feel like I successfully completed this week’s assignments, as much […]

For my first story critique I thought I would keep with the theme of the readings I completed this week.  I found a TEDx Talk by Jessie Wooley-Wilson that aimed to look at blending technology and education. For this critique I will be using the following evaluation traits: Flow, Organization, and Pacing Media Application Sense of Audience […]

For my interest-driven scholarship this week I wanted to read something that would give me a glimpse of what digital story telling might look like within my fourth grade classroom.  Already, just in week one of this course, I feel like I have learned a lot and have become engaged in new literacies in ways […]