Kenia's Corner

 This week, I spent some time exploring two of the tools from the list that I had never heard of before. Those tools were Piazza, and Hypothes.is. Piazza was a great tool to learn about as it provided an interactive space for teachers, students, and other relevant affiliates to interact on one platform. I love the informal aspect of this tool as it showed the participants exchanging information, such as questions and answers relevant to what they needed help with. This platform is helpful in that it provides a normal space outside the classroom and unspoken email etiquette that is usually needed to communicate with professors or others.  Hypothesis was another interesting tool focusing on the writing aspect in education as it has to do with annotation. I can see how this type of tool would be beneficial in helping students understand complex material while also providing commentary as the text progresses. This tool would be especially helpful in getting reviews and ideas for c...

 The "Tweet me, message me, like me..." article looks at how social media can help teachers improve their skills or switch up the way they teach. The article mentions social medias like Facebook and Twitter allow teachers to stay connected and get feedback outside of school, which helps them keep learning and growing. Facilitators, or guides, play a key role by supporting teachers, encouraging a sense of community, and helping them stick with new teaching methods through regular online interactions. Using social media for professional development should be optional, as not everyone is comfortable with it. However, I think it is still important to have people use social media to learn the basic functions as it is being utilized more in society. There are other ways to stay in touch, like emails primarily or even phone calls. Since everyone is not comfortable using all types of social media, building trust online will be important. In the article, it was concluded that facilita...

 As instructional designers, it is certainly important that we incorporate appropriate models and design principles when it comes to learning. The design process could look different, but the overall goal should always aim to achieve the established learning objectives. When incorporating social media into learning, I agree that it is essential to consider the value and strategy to support learning. While reading the "Instructional Design and Development for Social Media Lessons" article, learning about the SCOPE acronym served as a helpful guideline in determining whether social media should be used.  Before learning about the SCOPE-guided questions, I assumed that the only thing we needed to think about was whether the media lesson supported the learning objectives. Other aspects like the conditions, ethics, and values were not things I assumed would have been important. The most surprising part. of the questions to consider was, as it was something I would not have thought...

 Out of the tools listed this week, I was very surprised to learn about a tool where you can write a letter to your future self. With this 6th week, I have had several challenges and have felt like I needed a lot of encouragement. So it was nice to explore this tool, and even seeing that I could send money to my future self was such a cool feature. I ended up writing myself an encouraging letter that talked about what I have done, my goals, my hopes, and my aspirations. I wished my future self well and told her that no matter what she has going on in the future, she will succeed.  Writing that letter made me emotional and reminded me that I must be my biggest fan. With everything going on in life, there are times when things feel tough, and we can feel a lack of motivation. When I lack motivation, I think it is helpful to take a step back to reflect on the past challenges and how they have passed. Times like these are temporary, and without challenges, we stay stagnant. In my ...

 The Salomon article was an interesting read and basically discusses the importance of balancing technology and education. Indeed, there has been an influx of online learning strategies and techniques being utilized, but there is also concern about maintaining the primary focus of education. Education aims to provide knowledge, allow collaboration, and continue to grow our fundamental knowledge of particular topics.  Because of the many technologies that have been developed, some have lost sight of the importance of pedagogical approaches to learning. Salomon mentions failed approaches such as the one in Los Angeles, where a $1.3 billion iPad initiative resulted in poor usage and did not support education as was hoped. The article argues that this occurred because of the lack of proper implementation or pedagogical techniques to ensure proper use and practice. While technology is expected to change education, unlike other subject areas, education is not responding well to thos...

As time goes by through this course and my overall experience in the ISLT program, it has become apparent how important digital competency is for online learning. The Dennen et. al article on "College Student, Networked Knowledge Activities and Digital Competence: Implication for Online Instructors" continues to highlight the usefulness of the online approaches used for student learning. While it is often assumed that students are digitally capable of utilizing the online world to their benefit, learning would require a more structured approach.   Social media use has become a great part of the lives of many, especially those who are part of this "digital native" group. According to the research done within the article, despite the assumption that students are somewhat digitally competent, students do not have all the necessary skills or strong enough skills for online learning (Dennen et al., 2023). This is a challenge that online instructors would have to overcome...

 This week I spent quite some time reading articles and trying to get a better understanding when it comes to intellectual property or proper use of sources. As someone who plans to be creative, this was something valuable for me to gain insight into as I prepare for a future career in the field of academia. As much as giving credit to sources is emphasized in school, I don't believe that we have all been properly educated on using content ethically.  While doing some research on the internet, I found a very helpful resource that discusses what proper use of information looks like, and I wanted to share that. It explains intellectual property, things about copyright, and plagiarism. I saved it since I found it to be informative and simple in explanation of all the related concepts.  Link to : https://library.dsu.edu/c.php?g=22495&p=133177 I tried to look for infographics that were simpler but were not pleased with my options. I think this gives me an opportunity ...

 In my exploration of tools this week, I got to learn about a few new ones that I have never used or heard of. the most interesting one to me this week was MERLOT, which is a collection of online learning resources. A tool like this should have been more common and shared in general but this is my very first time learning about this. I did some searches to find out what ways this tool could be benefecial for learning uses. I ended up browsing a few article and found one that was related to the effective use of MERLOT.  Link: https://contentbuilder.merlot.org/toolkit/html/stitch.php?s=65391682894334 The link above is a brief overview of how different types of users can utilize MERLOT for content-building purposes.  For the student aspect, I learned about creating e-learning portfolios to showcase learning and how one can organize their content to be used by others.  I did some research into instructional design on Merlot and noticed there were many links leading ...

For the blog this week, the first article that caught my attention is "Open Educational Resources : Enabling universal education." In the article, it was my first time learning about OpenCourseWares (OCWs), which are online resources that provide access to educational materials from courses in universities (Cite here). This initiative was not one that I was aware of, but is a great development that was initiated by MIT.  I do support the availability of course materials for all the people who lack the resources to purchase some of those materials, those who may not be able to access them in person, and the global learners who want access to them.  Distance education is becoming increasingly popular and has more affordances than traditional education. With the ability to access education anywhere, and the availability of wifi, we can continue to expand our education through online learning environments. With additions of movements such as OCWs, we are making social impacts in ...

 For this week's tool exploration, I found myself having a great time on Pinterest. While I have used the app before, it has been a while since I have spent time creating boards on Pinterest, looking at what's trending, and just finding inspiration.  Since I am graduating this summer, I spent some time looking at graduation picture inspiration to plan out what to do. I ended up finding some nice poses, a whole outfit to wear under my cap & gown, and ideas for my hairstyling.  While I did do more personal research on there, I did also take a look for tools related to educational resources. I found an infographic about using social media in the classroom and I thought would be great to share below.  Reference Infographic link:https://www.pinterest.com/pin/218424650668903367/

Badges are becoming very popular and have started being incorporated in several settings, such as higher education. During this week's readings, I read the article "Who cares about open badges?..." and it highlighted how employers are looking for particular skills in people they are hiring. Personal badges to would be a great addition for candidates because they will highlight any desirable skills for those seeking them. While the article did focus on how using them for teacher candidates would be useful, I thought about how implementing this in the general job market would be beneficial.  Open badges could help job seekers show their skills and achievements in a clear and reliable way that goes beyond what's on their resumes. These digital badges come with details about who gave the badge or where, what it was for, and proof that the person earned it. Job seekers would be able to organize and share their badges, making them more appealing to employers who are seeking...

 In my exploration of this week's articles, the first one to catch my attention was about the use of microlearning challenges to promote student self-directed learning. This article was particularly interesting to me because I value the use of microlearning in an educational context. With all the new learning trends going on, microlearning has been increasingly utilized due the its flexibility, motivational elements, engagement, and other things like shortness. So when I noticed this article being on the list, I was interested to learn more about the impact that this form of learning is having in our Higher Education Institutions.  With any type of learning, it is very necessary to have certain guidelines in place for how learners need to participate or go about their learning. Microlearning is one of those instances where learners still need some type of reward for participation which in this case is making it a requirement within a course. In the case of the article, we see ...

  I have finally created a Reddit account, and it's my first time truly exploring this tool and seeing how it all works. I have always been very skeptical of Reddit because the structure is not something that is appealing to me personally. I have also not known many people to have explored this tool and truly uses it for everyday life. Now, setting up the account was straightforward, and it was nice to select the type of content I am already interested in to customize my feed.  I spent some time looking particularly at content related to fitness and the gym because I am still working on a workout plan for this week. Some of the information seemed like solid recommendations from some commenters, while others were not what I expected. However, I liked that at least there were people actually participating and sharing some of their favorite workout combinations. I did notice that there were some unexpected things on there that seemed on the unhinged side but I did not spend much ...

Self regulated learning is a topic of interest to me because of several of my past experiences. I have found myself to be more motivated when I have some say in the way that I go about learning on a subject. In personal life, I have often used social media, especially youtube for learning about a number of things such as lifestyle, fitness, cosmetics, and even documentaries of interesting subjects. I have learned a lot of information and even used the same method when it comes to my future career through the us of LinkedIn. So when one of the articles discussed these types of ideas, it was inetersting to learn about how self regulated learning is promoted through the concept of PLEs.  Dabbagh et al., the authors suggest how personal learning environments (PLEs) can be utilized in both formal and informal learning when it comes to the educational context. What is especially appealing to this approach is the control aspect from the students' end on how they go about this learning pro...