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I really enjoyed creating this padlet. It was definitely fun to play around with all the different options for backdrops, fonts, and images. I also think it's a great opportunity beyond just personalization, to be able to view others and compare how different they are because it showcases how unique we all are as humans and as learners. I think something a little confusing for me was that we could find the instruction for this weeks assignment sin three different places, and two of them didn't match up (one of them had an extra link). I also am busy with other homework, so to be completely honest I just skimmed most of it because I have so much reading homework to do every week. I think something that helped my learning was how open-ended these questions were because it allowed us to write about whatever was most interesting and important to us as learners. I definitely think this would be a great tool to use with students. In a way you get to learn about each other when viewing other people's padlets. I think the students especially would really enjoy making videos of them talking and explaining their learning, compared to writing paragraphs of text like this. It's also very engaging and inviting and easy to work with. Would definitely have to give a tutorial to those who aren't very tech-savy.

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I think something that a lot of people don't seem to realize is that teachers have to do SO much. These days it is far beyond just academic content. Rather, we are forming relationships, guiding students through life, being inclusive, and creating cultural competence and instilling critical consciousness in all of our students. We must focus on equity, individual and school goals and needs. We are rethinking what discipline in schools looks like and turning away from punitive and toward restorative justice practices. All of these things shape who we are as teachers and what our work looks like. And then we teach the academic content. One of the articles mentioned how important it is to create those cross-cultural connections and relationships and I agree that relationships are one of the most important aspects of school. I love the quote: "thrive by drawing on their individual and collective strengths to make sense of the world while trying to make a difference." As for COVID, I was definitely able to make some connections to another class I'm taking right now, Childhood & Society, a psychology class. We also looked at the disproportional effects of COVID on students of color and discussed how students might experience more abuse, witness domestic violence, not have a private space for learning, or have a lack of access to computers or the internet. COVID also presented unique challenges to students with learning challenges or disabilities who weren't getting their typical services and have fallen way behind.

One thing I found challenging was that for connected learning as well as the multimodal learning, they talked a lot about media and using new technologies available to network and amplify youth expertise, but what they don't consider is the effects technology and screens have on brain development. As a psychology major this is something I'm constantly thinking about with the long periods of time we spend in front of screens. It can diminish the gray matter in your brain and lead to life-long consequences. So I think limiting exposure to technology is also important to think about.

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Weekly Focus Question: Connected Learning

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Weekly Focus Question: Connected Learning

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Connected learning means allowing students to forge together academic pursuits, personal interests, and culture. It allows us as teachers to connect the spaces of inside of school, outside of school personal lives, and professional lives in the workforce to help students make sense of the world. Taking these various learning spaces into context can help us better support our students. We know that the world and society are constantly changing and shifting in needs and goals, and yet school has remained the same as it was during the industrial revolution. It is time we make the change necessary to match our education system to today's up-and-coming society. We need a revamp of what our classrooms should look like and what they mean. This can also help shape equity educationally, economically, and politically. Through this process, teachers also become learners as they see where the changes need to happen to best support our students to grow and thrive.