ENED 250 (Lit & Tech) - Zoe Vera by

First day

vera7073 — 2024-01-22 15:47:46 UTC

I'm sitting near people I know from a previous class. This class seems interesting.

Ted Talk Notes 1/23

vera7073 — 2024-01-24 15:09:13 UTC

· Helping people feel seen

· Stories connect you to people

· Story and data should be an “and” and not either-or

· When listening to a lecture, only the processing parts of your brain are working, but when listening to a story, it engages the whole brain

· As you listen to stories, the more empathy you have for the speaker

· Telling a story makes people trust you more

· Data doesn’t make us change, emotions do

· Decision making starts at the amygdala, the emotion epicenter

· Data never speaks for itself, its understanding is subjective

· Great Story

o Context?

o Conflict?

o Build and release tension

o Builds an idea

o Communicates value

· Need data and storytelling in order to make a talk memorable and actually encourage change

Ted Talk Class

vera7073 — 2024-01-25 19:52:49 UTC

Talking about how stories AND data can be helpful for teachers was helpful. Same with getting other people's opinions about the Ted Talk. Getting their opinions was also in a way having them telling a story, just restating the facts in their own words. Stories are the best way to explain a thought process or idea so can be helpful for comprehension of literature or technological tools.

Best Self

vera7073 — 2024-01-25 21:21:14 UTC

Personally, I think best when there aren't a ton of other conversations going around me. In group work, I do best when we split off to another room so I can fully focus on what my groupmates are saying.
Most conductive group work happens, when myself and my groupmates are comfortable enough around each other to have relaxed conversations about the topic, there's little silence, there's no interrupting but people's ideas can still bounce off one another.

Literacy NCTE Article

vera7073 — 2024-01-28 19:26:50 UTC

Challenges: I don't think technological tools are always needed/warranted for everything.

Impressions: Any kind of literacy is about comprehension and ability to use what you learned.

Need to remember: Have to always be looking for ways to make sure students have equitable easy access. Advocate for your students.

vera7073 — 2024-01-29 15:45:25 UTC

Science of Learning Article

vera7073 — 2024-02-01 22:07:25 UTC

I disagree about the learning styles thing, I understand right/left brain not affecting anything but I feel like people definitely learn better a specific way. I disagree because if a student has trouble listening or reading then lessons that are exclusively lecture or reading based will lead to them not learning as much or just completely disengaging.
Cognitive strategies that best promote learning: Elaboration (linking new stuff to stuff you know), Retrieval Practice (recalling stuff you want to know), Metacognition (reflecting on your own understanding and strategies), Spaced Practice (spacing out studying), Interleaving (not blocking a particular topic), and Dual Coding (multimedia).
I did not do too great on the survey but to be fair, the first half was heavily geared to people who are already teachers, so it was mostly hypothetical.
All of the cognitive strategies make sense when explained but the ones I find most helpful and would teach often is elaboration, retrieval, especially spaced practice. I would use interleaving and dual coding in my teaching but not necessarily heavily encourage my students to use them unless they are especially helpful for them. Metacognition might be a difficult concept for some younger students, but I would definitely introduce it.

Memoirs in order that I want to read:

vera7073 — 2024-02-12 14:51:40 UTC

-Mean Little Deaf Queer

-Rolling Warrior

-Sigh, Gone

Why Padlet isn't great for me:

vera7073 — 2024-02-14 14:54:27 UTC

I find using Padlet tedious. It's not the program specifically but what it's used for. Whiteboard spaces don't really work for me, it's not what I would normally use to take notes or reflect on essays. When we have a Padlet assignment, I'm using Padlet only because I have to and not because it actually helps.

If my students aren't showing their engagement through sites like Padlet, I would use the beginning of class time to gage their understanding in person.

AI for Educators

vera7073 — 2024-02-26 15:27:40 UTC

Would absolutely use: 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 13, 18, 19, 24, 25,

Could maybe use: 2, 8, 14, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28

Hesitant to use: 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 20, 21, 29, 30

Hard no:

For the ones that I would absolutely use, I put those ones there because it would help stimulate student learning and/or teaching without hindering or making students rely on it. For the ones in the other categories, I felt that those would kind of force students/teachers to rely on it and just having it do it for you instead of it actually helping.

Memoir first impression

vera7073 — 2024-03-04 14:56:08 UTC

I will be honest, I am only a couple chapters into my memoir, Rolling Warrior. However, I do enjoy her tone of voice and the way she explains things. Her tone is relaxed and personable, a little more formally than talking but it's definitely not written like an essay. As for the way she explains things, she explains her condition and events like it's just people talking and not like a doctor, which I appreciate.

Poetry Video Reflection

vera7073 — 2024-03-04 18:00:38 UTC

My first impression of this project was that it seemed easy, just putting pictures to a poem. That was a major part of the project but I hadn't realized the time and effort it takes to find and put together the images and all of the other things that make a video cohesive. My thought process for picking my poem was that I wanted it to be relatively short and mean something to me in some way. Since my favorite poet is Emily Dickinson, I started my search by just looking through some of her most popular poems and the poems that I recall. I had narrowed it down to four poems, I don't recall which ones, but I eventually landed on “Wild nights - Wild nights!” because it was short and I thought it had really good imagery to work with.

When it came to picking pictures/videos, I had a relatively easy time finding stuff because, like I said, the poem was chock full of imagery. I did find that this part limited my representation of the poem to very literal things as I couldn’t exactly express abstract concepts with stock images. That being said, being able to express my thinking in images and sounds allowed me to be more creative than with a formal essay. I didn’t love doing my own voiceover, but that’s just because I don’t like the sound of my own voice and not because I found it especially difficult. I did like that you gave the option for it to not be our own voice but when looking into my other options, other people who had posted it online or AI, doing it myself was just easier. I didn’t find any good options for other people reading and the sites that used an AI voiceover were either not free or downloading the sound was difficult.

I did enjoy watching other people’s videos because I was introduced to new poems, I got to see their interpretation, I feel like I got to know my classmates better, and I could compare my video to theirs to see where I could improve/change.

I did like this project, but I don't think I would do this with my own class one day. I want to teach middle school and I would want them to look deeper into the poem and like I said before, it was very easy to make it surface level. I might do something similar in addition to maybe a formal essay or a different formal thing, but I would most likely not do it as a stand-alone assessment of their understanding.

Poetry video

vera7073 — 2024-04-03 14:49:05 UTC

Poetry Video - Google Drive

Tech Demo Reflection

vera7073 — 2024-04-04 14:57:35 UTC

I felt that my tech demo presentation went fairly well. I felt prepared to share what I learned about Edpuzzle and I did what I need to do to. Preparing for my presentation was fairly easy, I had used edpuzzle when I was in high school, so I felt like I had a good starting grasp on what it was. Putting the video and questions together was actually really easy, Edpuzzle is a super intuitive and easy to use site from both teacher and student perspective. Honestly, the hardest part was just finding a good video to use as an example. Going into the presention was a little weird for me since it was my first real presentation since high school and I've gained a lot more confidence since then. Like my mind was completely fine about having to present but my body was still going through the motions of being anxious about it. But I just kept reminding myself that I was fine, I was ready, and I didn't need to be panicking. Once I started the video, I was able to calm down. the feedback that I got was positive and my suggestions for next time were either about confidence (which I totally understand, I started to get a little shaky in the beginning) and that they wanted to see things from a teacher perspective but I knew that someone else was presenting on that so I didn't want to go too deep into it.

Personally, after both presentations, I don't think Edpuzzle really needed two, I think one person could've presented about both the teacher and student perspective, it might just have a little bit longer.

Tik Tok Teacher Idea

vera7073 — 2024-04-26 12:54:42 UTC

A Tik Tok I found that I had a really good idea was about a game that could be used for review, test prep, vocab, or really any kind of activity. It's called Star Smiley Snow and is like a tic tac toe remix. The teacher separates the class in 3 groups, when a group has finished a question, they bring it u the teacher and if it's correct, the put their groups symbol (star, smiley, or snow) on a massive tic tac toe board. This game sounds super fun, encourages teamwork and also helps students master content. I always loved fun review games like this when I was a student because it helped me learn while also being engaging. I would totally use this in my classroom!

Professional Development Seminar Reflection

vera7073 — 2024-05-10 14:13:18 UTC

I think our seminar went really well. Prior to the seminar, my group fully prepared for our presentation. We started our work mostly separately because we each focused on finding statistics for some of the more common disabilities. We each has tasks to do and the work felt fairly divided. Even though a lot of the initial work was done separately and simultaneously, we still commented on, made suggestions, and offered opinions on each other's work. The two days before our presentation, our group met for an hour each day to make final revisions and practice. I felt fully prepared going into the presentation. Like my tech demo presentation, my body was nervous and was going through the motions of being nervous for a presentation, but my mind wasn't anxious at all because I felt ready. Most things in the presentation went off without a hitch, except for the fact that I forgot my mentimeter password so we couldn't show the results to the class, but we pivoted and still discussed them. Based on my classmate's engagement with our presentation, I would say that we accomplished our goal of raising awareness, especially awareness in the classroom.

Digital Narrative

vera7073 — 2024-05-13 19:47:08 UTC

I enjoyed making the digital narrative. At first, I was a little annoyed because it is time consuming to make and happened to be due when I had a bunch of other assignments. But, I am very happy with my final product. I did my project on my trip to Europe so it was really fun to go through my millions of pictures that I took on that trip and picking which ones to include in the video. My narrative was surprisingly easy to write considering I had a hard time picking my topic but once I started writing, it was actually pretty fun and easy to write. Using Capcut was way easier than WeVideo even though it was my first time using it. There's lots of clearly labeled features and it makes a pretty high-quality video. After I finished making the video, I actually sent it to my parents because I thought they might like it and they ended up loving it so much that they sent it to my grandparents and the people we went on the trip with. My grandma said it could be on the History Channel (which I thought was a little exaggerated but still very nice) and one of the family friends we went on the trip with is actually a history teacher and she said that she loved it so much, she's going to do a similar project with her students!