Blog Post Number 4

Well, everyone – welcome to my fourth and final blog post! It's been a long journey, but I am honestly so proud of myself for sticking with it. If I hadn't done this for a project, I already know I would have given up on my running goal a LONG time ago.

I really do think I have increased my endurance over the course of this month – I am able to run for longer, and definitely don't hold as much hate for running as I did prior to this experience. After a run I would feel so accomplished and refreshed, and I really want to continue to push myself to keep improving. I will admit that I didn't end up running 5km straight, without any breaks; however, I did cut my time to 5km in 31 minutes, which is slow, but much better than I thought I would be able to do!

Look at me go! I'm so speedy!

The whole idea of a genius hour project is to have the time to explore an idea or act that you wouldn't normally – I thought this was a really beneficial way to go about a typical project, as it allowed me to set goals and do something I never thought I would spend time doing, let alone enjoying. I think the whole idea of a genius project is a very valuable idea, and can be incorporated within many lessons with various age groups. Having to reflect on your experiences each week also ensured that you were sticking to your plan and keeping up with the project; I found this to be very helpful, as it didn't let me procrastinate (too much). I am also really glad I chose a fairly ambitious goal – while I didn't totally reach what I originally set out for myself, I gained a lot from it! I hope to use and apply what I have gained outside of the perimeters of this project. For me, I'm excited because this project won't just end here – I really want to keep up with running when I can, because I really don't want to lose all the hard work I just put in!

Reflecting on the Experience

I haven't really taken the time in this blog to reflect on my experiences on the tech class and what I have learned. While this class was fast-paced, I have learned many new technology-based resources that I otherwise would not have known about. As well, I've gotten an idea of what resources I will want to implement within my own classroom, and what ones I found to be not as helpful or engaging. For example, I was really impressed with PowToon, and could see this being a very beneficial tool to have students learn about. Using PowToon in this project, I thought it was a much more engaging alternative to creating a basic powerpoint or google slides. Another tool I will use in my class will be iMovie – this is a great tool for students of all ages, and can be used in a variety of subject areas. It doesn't need much explaining, and students can figure out what the resource is capable of through exploring it themselves. It also has so many trailer templates which are super easy to use – the movie trailer was fun to make and would be a great collaborative group assignment for students of any age! I also found our jigsaw activity of finding online resources to be very helpful – I came across a really interesting site called, "Emaze" which had helpful templates for class lesson presentations. I will definitely use this site in my future!

Technology is such an important aspect of 21st century learning, so I'm really glad I got a chance to explore areas of technology that I wasn't comfortable with before this class (hello PowToon, Google paint, embedding links on blogs, Google Forms and Google Sites). As well, I learned a lot about digital media and digital citizenship, which will hopefully give me a better understanding of using technology properly, as well as enough confidence to teach others and implement it in my lessons!

Anyways, this class and project really zipped by! I hope you all got something from my blog, even if it was just a good laugh at my TedTalk or iMovie. I'm excited to have more knowledge in the area of technology, but I definitely need to continue my learning and exploring if I want to feel confident to teach my students about some of these resources.

Thanks for checking into my blog everyone! Who knows, maybe I'll be back blogging sometime soon!

Madeleine

























References:

Teaching tech to teachers infographic. (2015). Teacher infographics. Retrieved from https://elearninginfographics.com/teaching-tech-teachers-infographic/

Campbell, Madeleine. (2018). Shoes. 
Campbell, Madeleine (2018). Me running. 
Campbell, Madeleine (2018). Sky.