Final Round

Round 4…

What was your favorite topic, article or video? Why?

My favorite video from this week is one that I found for the Coding As Literacy Module. I know that is kind of a cop-out, but I really dig this video. Check it out.

I think the idea that students like this, students that we will see in our classroom on a regular basis, are becoming far more computer literate than a lot of their teachers is fascinating and a bit worrisome. I think its a great reminder of the importance of this class and digital literacy in general. Plus, the fact that a sixth grader is giving a Ted Talk and informing an audience with a level of knowledge about his subject area which is probably much greater than the majority of those watching is impressive and worth the time to check it out.

What was the best hypothes.is (PADLET) discussion? Why? Provide quotes.

• I’m going to have to cheat on this one as my favorite discussion did not come from hypothes.is but rather from Padlet this last few weeks. Getting to plan and Module with my classmates was a lot of fun and I think we all had some really good input into the discussion. What was especially cool was the way that we could “grade” ideas as a way to give hot and cold feedback in a more direct manner. Check out some of the discussions below. We had fun and hopefully that comes across in this weeks module! (sorry, not an easy site to copy and paste)

What was your favorite creation from a classmate? Who impressed you? Why?

My favorite creation of this Module came courtesy of Leah Chamberlain and her Vintage Futurism Duck and Cover video! I think I enjoyed this one so much because 1) She remixed something vintage and made it new by chopping in new video clips and clearly had some fun with it, and 2) I think that Leah took the content in a really relevant and interesting direction that I enjoyed thoroughly. Seeing my fellow classmates get so creative with their weekly-things is always a lot of fun. Leah’s relevant take made this my favorite creation by a classmate this module.

What did you make and what tools did you use? (challenges, dialogs, weekly-thing)

Vintage Futurism— (Week 13)

(From Slack) — Here is my Mod-5 challenge. I did the Vintage Futurism challenge. I took an add about a book that taught children to tie there shoes and remixed it for the 21st century. For this challenge I used the Vector Editor from Pixlr (https://pixlr.com/?ref=producthunt). It’s not perfect but the editor was entirely online which was convenient. It took a few minutes, and a few attempts, to figure out how to re-purpose, but was overall pretty intuitive and user friendly.

Weekly-Thing (Week 13) — Padlet

For Week 13 we got to explore and plan our own Module for this class! This one was a lot of fun but also a big challenge. We, as a group (King Kong), threw a few ideas onto Padlet and got to grade and give feedback to one another about what would be fun for our class to explore for a week. I got really into our idea Coding As Literacy, as well as some ideas that got shot down, and watched a bunch of videos and played a bunch of Coding games to explore some ideas for the class. Below are some of my posts (and ideas)…

Dialogue # 4— Greetings From Mars

For my last dialogue, I hosted a conversation with Kim Martin about the digital interactive postcard site Greetings From Mars… The website was pretty fascinating and a bit different than what I expected. We had a lot of fun with this one and had a pretty interesting conversation that got us both thinking about the different ways in which this website (or format) could be altered to fit our own classrooms. Check it out below!

Weekly-Thing (Week 14) — How Narcissistic Are You?

How Narcissistic Are You? (From SLACK) — I took the How Narcissistic Are You Quiz, and as you all can see, I am super awesome and amazing and not that into myself at all. I’m the best! Anyway, I digress. I thought that this was pretty cool. I did wonder if anyone really ever scored poorly on it? The questions and answers were pretty obvious about how you would score, none the less, I did enjoy. Pretty fun stuff!

Weekly-Thing (Week 15) — CodeCombat

(from slack)

So, when planning this Module, I came across Code Combat and really fell in love with it and thought that it would be a lot of fun for you all to try. I never really thought about coding before this. I took a very basic computer science class in High School but remember almost nothing about it. But, if it was anything like Code Combat I can tell you right now that I probably would have majored in it at college. I’ve played this 3 or 4 times now. It basic, but a whole lot of fun and something that I think can translate super well in the classroom. Its something that I think will really spark and interest in students can open a lot of doors. Definitely worth checking out. https://codecombat.com/students?_cc=PinkSpellCity

What was your biggest stretch?

My biggest stretch for Module 5 came in the form of creating the module for Week 15 with my classmates. I really wanted to make something fun to finish out the class with and floated some ideas to my classmates. Ultimately we landed on Coding As Literacy which I think came out great. I researched some websites, and Ted Talks (I watched a lot of Ted Talks) that I thought could provide some interesting topics or activities and found some really fun stuff that I think my classmates will really get into. After some tinkering and the formation of my idea for the challenge I did get to have some fun with it. The stretch came in finding options for videos that played well into the topic, as well as the formation so that the rest of class would have a clear understanding of what was taking place. This was a real layered overview of what it may be like to plan and teach something like Digital Literacy in the future. Overall, fun stretch this module. A little digital yoga, and a dive into something I may be able to use in my own classroom in the future.