#GEN2243 For Life !

Exploring my digital portfolio has been a very useful and creative experience for me. #Gen2243 has truly opened my eyes to how important the use of different tools and technology is to your education and career. As a young college student and professional I have been able to use everything that I've learned this semester in and outside of the classroom. A major component of this course was building a Personal Learning Network, and in the process of doing so I have been able to interact with professionals and really establish myself on social networks. I was lucky enough to find a great job and summer internship right out of college, so this course couldn't have come at a better time for me. I have been struggling with this transition from a procrastinating college student to a full time professional, and the digital tools that we've used throughout this course have been a great help. Tweeting and blogging have become two of my favorite ways to network and have been the most valuable. I was at first discouraged when I realized how much this course geared toward the education field, but many of the topics we discussed were relevant to my career. One of the most important topics we discussed was proper social media etiquette. This gave me the opportunity to research a professional in my intended career field who was fired over an inappropriate Facebook post.

APP SMACKDOWN!

For our App Smackdown we were each required to get up in front of the class to give a short 2 minute synopsis of an app and how it relates to your major or intended career. I actually found a great one called CamCard, which provides you with the opportunity to scan and store any business cards for free! I have since used this app on several different occasions to store important contact information for work and even created my own business card that I can share via text or email.

GOOGLE HANGOUT!  

#GEN2243 has met with some very inspirational educators and professionals consistently throughout the semester on Google hangout. We recently had the opportunity to hear from educator Robyn Hrivnatz, who is currently employed at Microsoft as a Senior Teacher Engagement Manager for U.S. Education managing, Astronaut Abby, an aspiring scientist and astronaut who dreams of being the first to land on Mars, and Adam Taylor, a high school science teacher who created the website scistuchat.com, where students can make connections between science and their world and interact with real scientists through twitter. They have each been able to provide us with great advice on how to expand our PLN and connect with professionals using Twitter and LinkedIn. I am glad that I was able to actually interact with such amazing professionals while using Google hangout for the first time!

Presentation Tools!

I was so excited to learn the different advanced presentation tools which were each great alternatives to the traditional PowerPoint. Prezi was one of my favorites and I have been using it ever since. Haiku Deck and Google Slides are also two great ways to spice up your presentation.

 

I recommend this #GEN2243 course to all Stockton Seniors who are about to venture off into a world of advanced technology to build a career !

   

Technology, Education, & Energy!

Chapter 9 of The Connected Educator focuses on how learning is affected by advanced technology. Classroom learning strategies change in response to how technology has evolved. From an educators perspective you must change your way of learning, rather than how you teach and lead, in order to effectively model lifelong adaptive learning strategies for your students. To make this change you must consider the four major components of learning 2.0, these include knowledge, pedagogy, connections, and capacity. You must also ask yourself if are preparing students for yesterday, today, or tomorrow? And think what principled changes you should be making in the classroom to ensure that you are developing in students the skill set they will need as they face future challenges. The chapter also addressed the moral purpose of teaching and the need to do something powerful to promote change in your school or classroom. "Be the example you want your students to be".


Last week my colleagues and I had the opportunity to hear from educator Robyn Hrivnatz, who is currently employed at Microsoft as a Senior Teacher Engagement Manager for U.S. Education managing the MIE Expert and MIE Trainer Communities, as well as curriculum lead for professional learning. She has been an educator for 16 years and has a passion for working with educators and learners to integrate technology to help revolutionize today's classroom and empower global citizenship. She was able to discuss some of the key elements of her career and how she incorporates social media. She is such an inspiration and great example of a learner and thinking leader!

Following this great discussion, our class broke into groups to play Frogger. Yes that may sound elementary but it was a great learning experience and way to prepare us for tasks in the professional world! In order for our frog to successfully make it through hazards we had to work as a team and figure out what different objects to use that conduct energy. Energy from an electrical circuit is what allowed us to operate the frog using our keyboard. Each individual from our team was able to point out what they believed to be a barrier and we were able to find the proper energy source. Who knew that the human body could serve as a conductor for energy. It was a matter of trial and error as well as being able to come to an agreement with the members of your team and work together effectively. Aside from constantly rearranging the wires and finding the appropriate conductor, we wouldn’t have been able to overcome issues without communication.

Social Media tools and How to Intergrate Them with Websites

In chapter 4 of Untangling The Web, authors focus on a variety of social networking tools. These tools are explained as great ways to supplement face-to-face interactions and provide more opportunities to extend those relationships. Social networking will also enhance your ability to collaborate online. TodaysMeet.com is a virtual room that educators can use to enhance their students learning process through web-based communication. You can also connect your students to the world by using Skype in the classroom. Creating an account on education.skype.com provides you with the opportunity to video chat with experts, as well as connect with professionals to make a great introduction to your research. If you want to provide learners with a platform for self-expression in their academic life introduce them to a great blogging tool designed for the classroom, Kidblog.org. Blogging may serve as a means for sharing personal interests, documenting classroom experiences, or even as a place for reflecting upon their own efforts, success, and failures. Also, if you have not already, consider using the microblogging social media site and mobile app Twitter. This provides an avenue for people to share and be discovered in a less obtrusive way. Being social online is an important part of providing the best educations for students today.      


       I have just recently learned some great ways to integrate websites with social media using paper.li publisher and IFTTT (If This Than That). The big list of IFTTT Recipes show the different options for powering up your social media marketing. IFTTT connects two services together so that an action on one service triggers an action on another. It works with the major social media services such as Facebook, twitter, instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. All of these sites can connect with noteable channels such as:

Pocket

Jawbone Up

Soundcloud

Gmail

Google Calendar

Evernote

How to become a paper.li publisher shows you step by step how to create an online paper using paper.li. The service lets you aggregate news from several sources using keywords and hashtags to find content matching your theme.


You can find some of the many perks of paper.li on the article Follow 5 People Smart Ways with Paper.li. These include being able to keep up with tweets and articles when away from twitter, learning more about a particular topic, sharing your paper.li summary with individuals who do not have twitter, get information from those you do not wish to follow, and follow a topic or event by hashtag.  See how easy it is to run your very own online newspaper using Paper.li, your Twitter account, and feeds?  

Tools For Learning and Socia Media Etiquette

Chapter 5 of The Connected Educator highlights a variety of tools for learning and connecting through social bookmarking, networking, and blogging. It describes popular bookmarking websites like Delicious and Diigo, where you can save and tag your online resources. Tags, are keywords that you use to describe the content you are organizing for easier retrieval later. As you can see, these are commonly used in blogs to help you find all posts corresponding to keywords. Blogging is an importance resource online for connecting and collaborating to build your PLN (personal learning network). Many people, especially young adults view and utilize Twitter as just a social network, however it is actually an important microblogging service that can be used to perform the necessary functions for connecting and collaborating with professionals.  If you are looking for social network sites that will be practical and valuable for you check out Ning, which also allows you to connect, interact, and collaborate with others by building and cultivating your own community.

 

BE SOCIAL MEDIA SAVVY ! 

 

 

As a professional you must be aware of appropriate social media etiquette and the Do's and Dont's, especially while building your career. The internet offers employers a gold mine of information about their hires. Before hitting send on a tweet or post, make sure that it's the best representation of you, your family and your workplace. If possible, make sure that everything you post is appropriate for all audiences.

 

 

 

Last week I did a social media etiquette presentation on Michael A. Allred, who is a former employee of the department of public safety and correctional services. He was fired for an inappropriate Facebook post about the guards at a prison facility where he tagged his new prison chief. After all the scandal in the system with corrections officers having sex and children with the inmates, a Facebook post by the now-former top aide could have made the state's prison system the punchline of many a joke. Allred’s response to tight security did nothing but display his ignorance and lack of professionalism. After 11 news began publicly questioning prison chief Steve Moyer about his employee's post, Allred was terminated immediately. This incident serves as a great example of why you must handle your social media accounts with grace as a professional. You must know what to avoid while using these sites, because today one wrong post can interfere with a great job opportunity and negatively impact your future. Be Social Media Savvy! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Bring the learning experience to life!

Are any of you Harry Potter fans? "Picture yourself walking through the halls of Hogwarts. The pictures hanging on the walls of Hogwarts are not your normal, static pictures but are alive and interactive with the students". That's one good analogy to describe the magical experience of Augmented Reality. Augmented reality has created a fun and technologically advanced way of teaching and brings life to the learning experience! This new innovative tool allows us to interact with the 3D world that appears right in front of you.

Just last week Professor Calderwood brought a giraffe to class using Zookazam, a fun augmented reality app for IOS. By viewing the printed targets through this app you can see animals appear right on the desk in front of you or in the palm of your hands. We were able to watch an image actually come to life and our reaction was almost as if were back in elementary school.

But augmented reality can even be utilized outside of the classroom. How VR and AR will be training tomorrow’s workforce explains how augmented reality and virtual reality add labels, captions, and other helpful overlays to a user’s view of his environment in the workforce.  With users able to rewind training and progress at their own pace, VR and AR systems can also help combat our shrinking attention spans. Resource extraction and healthcare both have embraced this technology. Other industries are now following suit. With such a broad range of employee-training applications, it’s clear that both VR and AR technology will be important to the corporate enterprise of the future.

In class we took a look at some other cool AR apps, aside from zookazam, that are described in Four Cool Augmented Reality Science Apps.  These include Elements 4D, which is an AR chemistry app for iOS and Android devices that provides a fun way to look at various different chemical reactions. Also Anatomy 4D, which allows you to explore an augmented reality 3D body and provides models of the human body as well as an interactive heart. And finally, NASA’s Spacecraft 3D, which lets you learn about and interact with a variety of spacecraft that are used by NASA to explore our solar system, study Earth, and observe the universe.

 

 

Tools That Can Help You To Build A Network And Connect With Professionals

During a Google Hangout last week, my colleagues and I had the opportunity to speak with Astronaut Abby, an aspiring scientist and astronaut, who dreams of being the first to land on Mars. Visiting her webpage Astronautabby.com is a great way to follow her on her journey and get inspired! She has achieved some very exceptional things for a 18 year old girl just beginning college. I am a 22 year old college graduate who is now taking a college course to help expand the quality of my PLN, and she has been networking with professionals since she was 14 years old. During the course of the conversation with Abby she was able to provide us with some very useful tips on how to connect with professionals. She explained the 24 hour Rule, which directs us to contact a professional by email within 24 hours of meeting them. I have just recently attended a career fair and wish that I knew about this rule prior. But Abby had some great suggestions on how to actively reach out to professionals and build a network. You must reinforce those connections. As she said, it is not enough to just follow them on social networks.




Another great tip that I wish I received prior to the career fair, was the use of a business card mobile app mentioned by Professor Calderwood. I actually found a great one called CamCard, which provides you with the opportunity to scan and store any business cards for free! It has some really great reviews on it's ability and function. You can add notes and reminders to contacts, get contact updates, and search your contacts' company for news to start a great conversation. This app is a perfect fit for any professional and can help expand the quality of your PLN.

You want to know another great way to connect with professionals? Grab their attention. Your resume, your degree, and your LinkedIn, can speak for your credentials but how well can you present information? Without boring them with your wordy PowerPoint of course.



There are so many advanced presentation tools that can serve as an alternative to PowerPoint and can be used for any educational and professional purpose. For example you can spice up your presentation with the free iPad app Haiku Deck. Haiku Deck is all about simple, beautiful, and fun. Just type a few words onto your slide and the program will search for matching (free) Creative Commons licensed photos. You then select the photo you feel best communicates your message and stylish formatting is applied with just a couple of taps. The app pulls in photo attribution automatically, which is a huge time saver.
 
Or may I suggest this article on 5 reasons to replace PowerPoint with Google Slides. Google slides is built for collaboration, has a simple UI which encourages a simpler presentation, has offline access for editing and presenting, you can access your presentation from ANY device, and provides easy web publishing and sharing. ITS ALSO FREE! I think it is great that Google Slides allows you to share your presentation on the web, where you are most likely to interact with professionals the most. They can even comment on your presentation with positive feedback or anything they may have gained from the information.

This article Anything but PowerPoint helps me to rest my case. It provides in-depth descriptions of other presentation tools that blow ordinary slide shows out of the water. These tools allow you to utilize sound, animation, and other effects that may be way more eye-catching to professionals and colleagues. It suggests the android mobile app called SoftMaker, which allows you to create slides straight from your android device. And Prezi, a tool that allows a presenter to pan and zoom around a contiguous presentation, versus the serial one-slide-at-a-time productions. Long story short, is the only experience more painful than sitting through a boring presentation is giving a boring presentation. If a concept is worth presenting, it’s worth presenting effectively

Some very Effective Presentation and Life Strategies

  Last week in GEN 2243, our class had the pleasure of hearing from Adam Taylor in a Google Hangout session. This high school science teacher created the website scistuchat.com where students can make connections between science and their world and interact with real scientists through twitter. Every second Thursday of every month student moderators from various high schools discuss and share information regarding a science related topic using the hashtag #SciStuChat. This was a great way to teach high school students how to connect with professionals using social media. The site includes a video on how to participate in these chats, as well as how to set up a professional twitter account. During our discussion with Adam he pointed out the importance of making connections on twitter rather than your amount of followers. This serves as a helpful tip to anyone looking to expand the quality of their personal learning network. He also recommends that we connect with professionals by making lists and sharing resources. A great discussion!

#SciStuChat

https://youtu.be/9q1ukBp576M

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In a heartfelt ted talk, blogger and author Neil Pasricha reveals the 3 secrets to leading a life that's truly awesome, which he refers to as the 3 A's. Neil was very open and honest with his experiences and has chosen to share his inspirational thoughts on how one should take on life positively. He reflects on Attitude, which he describes as making the decision to move forward despite pain that you  may encounter. Awareness, he explained as embracing your inner 3 year old and remembering that you saw everything that you've seen for the first time once too. IF THAT MAKES ANY SENSE! The last A stands for Authenticity and he describes it as being YOU and being cool with that. When being authentic you end up following your heart and feeling fulfilled. His message was that there are so many things to be happy about including the opportunity to experience everything in life. Life is so great and we only have a short amount of time to enjoy it. Neil believes that with a great attitude, awareness, and authenticity you can live a life that is rich and fulfilling. This has been one of the most open and courageous ted talks I've seen and I applaud him. 

 

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Chapter 3 of Untangling the Web discuss presentation tools that are an alternative to PowerPoint and veer away from the traditional presentation genre. He describes the effectiveness of a presentation that can stand on it's own using audio and live components rather than bullet points and a presenter. Once you identify the information you wish to share then consider the audience, you must decide your method of delivery. The author describe a few effective web tools. These include SlideShare, which converts your presentation for online viewing and allow you to share with professionals, Poll Everywhere, which is a response system that is intended to be used with mobile devices and is great for educators, Voicethread, which allows you to collaborate, share, and connect through audio and photos, and is highly intuitive to both teacher and students, and last but not least, Prezi. Prezi was the first site to actually break from the norm and demonstrate that a presentation could be more than a typical PowerPoint.