Course Reflection of Learning: EdTech 513

I feel my biggest challenge of starting this online summer course was learning how to allocate and manage my time appropriately. I was also a bit apprehensive of completing a Master’s degree online due to the inability to meet with professors face to face and hear instructions first-hand. However, I made an effort to keep an open mind and a positive attitude. I quickly found myself in a structured routine in completing my coursework and I was pleased that our professor, as well as Moodle, kept us so organized with clear directions for each project and activity. I am truly proud of the work that I completed in this course, but I feel that my two favorite artifacts were my Haiku Deck and my Digital Story. I am particularly pleased with my Haiku Deck slideshow, as it will give my math students helpful tips to succeed in my 7th grade math classroom in the coming years. Additionally, my Digital Story leads viewers through my study abroad adventures and experiences using multiple pictures, text, and audio narration. Learning how to create an online video slideshow, upload my audio on iMovie, and transfer the final piece to YouTube was challenging, but very rewarding. Upon completion of the first semester of my Master of Educational Technology degree, I can honestly say that I have already learned so many engaging strategies and resources that I can implement in my own math classroom.

Worked Example Screencast

For this activity, I created an online video tutorial that will help my 7th grade math seminar students navigate through BuzzMath this year. This is a math website that has been very helpful for my seminar students in the past who need an extra boost. Therefore, this video will be beneficial for them to watch at the beginning of the school year. I downloaded a tool called Jing Project on my MAC computer in order to capture computer screenshots and record audio for this project. In my opinion, there are definitely a couple of downfalls of Jing. First, I did not like the video time limit that it strictly puts in place. It does not allow individuals to exceed five minutes, and therefore, some information that I would have loved to have discussed in my video was not included. Additionally, this resource does not allow individuals to edit their videos, and therefore, it had to be completed in one take. However, this could be seen as a positive in that I was forced to choose only the most vital and pertinent information, rather than violating the Redundancy Principle. Needless to say, I had to work through many different takes until I was satisfied with my video. For those of you that admittedly tend to babble on in videos (which I feel that I do sometimes) and add unnecessary information, Jing would be a great option for you!

I hope that you will view my Screencast video HERE!

The words that I spoke throughout my video can be found in the following Word file: Jing Screencast Buzzmath video narration.

Welcome to my EdTech Learning Log!

Hello! My name is Claire. As a graduate student in the Master of Educational Technology program at Boise State University, I am so excited to learn about the many engaging ways that technology tools and resources can be implemented within my current mathematics classroom. You can view my Animoto introduction/”About Me” video HERE! In addition to EdTech 513, I am also currently enrolled in EdTech 501, where we created a Pinterest board showing a bit more about ourselves.

Thank you for stopping by! I look forward to the continuation of an awesome summer semester.