Reflections: The Second Grad School Class

EDLD 5303 is unlike any class I have taken because this class was a gift of time, time to work on my e-portfolio and to explore myself as a learner. I only had one assignment and that was to develop an e-portfolio as a way to house and display examples of our work and learning as we pursue our master's degree. We were encouraged us to develop our blogs, learn more about COVA and CSLE, and explore the importance of an e-portfolio to a learner.

A benefit of this class was getting to know our classmates, we were put into small groups so we got to directly interact with our fellow classmates and learn more about them. I enjoyed exploring their sites more in depth, getting ideas from them, and sharing ways that we can improve our own websites. Steven, Kristen, Diana, and I met through Google hangouts to discuss small changes we could make and provide feedback to each other. It was very helpful having that sounding board in a smaller environment, it gave me more confidence for when I was ready to share my site with the rest of the class.

Some of the things that we had to accomplish as part of our final assignment was to either revamp our growth mindset plan or we could create a dialogue of our digital past, present, and future discussing where we think we're going to be going with this degree we are earning. This particular assignment was somewhat challenging due to the fact that I had gotten extremely sick with some kind of food poisoning, I was hurling and I couldn't even stand up for more than 30 seconds so working was just was not happening. Then I have slow internet (mobile hotspot since I couldn’t go out in public), it turns out my video editing software is web-based therefor can we say slower than turtles stampeding through peanut butter. Parts two and three of the assignment was to edit and update our learning manifesto and PLN networks if needed. Then part four was wrapping it all together in this final post.

My biggest takeaway from this class was the importance of allowing my students to have choice, ownership, and voice when developing an authentic learning environment. I was able to start incorporating this with my GT students in class as we are incorporating genius hour to allow the students to start learning about things they want to learn. Within the next 5 weeks my students should start developing their own e-portfolios and blogs to demonstrate their learning and take these tools with them as they move into middle and high school years.