Over the course of this semester I have been tasked with learning something utilizing the technology around me. When I first started I thought this would be easy I use technology all the time what could be so hard. Well let me tell you as someone that has done most of my learning in a traditional setting ( a classroom) it posed a bigger challenge than I thought. Being self motivated is not an easy thing when their are so many obligations that take up our time. While this is not the first online course I have taken it seems to be a recurring theme for me that I struggle when I do not have face to face meetings to help scaffold my learning. This I believe will aid me it creating lessons that utilize technology and PLC for my students. Understanding the roadblocks they may encounter will allow me to anticipate their struggles and to build in checkpoints to ensure learning is taking place and a community is being built. This is an important skill for students to learn more and more the world interacts using digital communities and just the like the physical community we live in students must learn how to treat others with respect and kindness. This lesson will be transferable beyond the classroom of course we want to create students who reflect a positive and caring mentality but we also want to prepare them to work using these digital communities being able to have thoughtful discussions that help one another is critical to a functioning community and this applies the digital as well as physical. Overall I will say I struggled with this assignment but that does not mean I did not learn anything.
During this semester I have been able to cultivate a PLC using social media and web tools that allow me to take in content as well as produce it. Using social media sites like Twitter have been a great way for my to share my learning while being able to find a plethora of resources from which to utilize. YouTube is another great resource that I have used before I have always viewed the site as a time killer something to watch funny cat videos online. YouTube turned out to be one of my biggest teachers when it came to learning Ukulele. The last tool I utilized was a community on Google + dedicated to people who like and want to play the Ukulele this community page was almost like a coach telling me I can do it on the sideline of a ball game. The community offered discussion, photos and general place to share the content we all were creating. These personal learning communities helped me to push through the hard parts of learning by providing support from so many different backgrounds. These PLC also provided me with a more traditional sense of community of people working to help each other even when they may be miles away. The historian in me is in awe of this power for most of my education the ability to communicate and transfer ideas has been a focus of my studies looking at how humans communicate and how readily that information is available has been the benchmark of how far society can move. Looking at what I have been able to accomplish in t
Well the time has come to post my first performance, this was a little scary for me and took some help from my family. Over the past few months I have been practicing my Ukulele learning how to play "you are my sunshine. The video while I do not sing represents my efforts to teach my self using technology as my textbook. I have viewed countless Youtube videos, read blogs, tweets and surfed the web endlessly to help me achieve this goal. Hope you enjoy and please be kind with your remarks still new at this. While practicing my ukulele I began to notice the strings were becoming out of tune. I am lucky enough to have a sister who play's guitar and used her electric tuner shown on the left. For those without a tuner there are tons of apps that you can download onto your phone or tablet unfortunately I do not own an iPhone or iPad so I can not speak for the mac products as for android I can help point you in the right direction. One app that I have found useful was the easy ukulele-ukulele tuner you can download the app for free from the google play store it's easy to use. You can use this app to tune each individual string it uses a chromatic tuning setting making it easy to tune for those of us that are not classically trained in music. If you feel like getting a tuner I would suggest going down to a local music shop or guitar center (they will tune it for you) and pick up an electric tuner they are easy to use and most store will show you how if you do not already. Below is a great Youtube video on how to tune your Ukulele while he uses a fancy tuner the same principles apply to other tuners as well. Happy tuning Ukuers |