Blooming Flowers

In VLOG form!

Hello EME6414 friends!  Today I want to dive into an app I really like called Marco Polo and talk about why I think it might be useful in adult learning communities and how people are already using it for individual coaching! So what is it? Marco Polo is an app that allows you to send video messages to your friends (or co-workers or clients) on your own time and then they can respond on their own time. Unlike Snapchat, the videos can be as long as you want and they remain archived on the cloud, so you can always go back and listen again. You can also set up a group chat where every person sees every video that is shared, instead of just sending it out and getting individual messages back. (This was one of my issues with Snapchat when I used to use it, I'm not sure if it has changed now).  I have used Marco Polo throughout the last year starting at the beginning of the pandemic to keep up with friends near and far in the time when we couldn't really be face to face. I loved tha...

What is a personal learning environment, or PLE, and why should we consider them a valuable pedagogical tool to be used in any classroom? After reading  Personal Learning Environments, social media, and self-regulated learning: A natural formula for connecting formal and informal learning, here are some of my thoughts on the subject.  A personal learning environment is the individual's choice to use the web 2.0 world for personal research, collaboration, and presentation of their discoveries.   " Rubin, 2010 ,  McGloughlin and Lee, 2010  posit that PLEs empower students to take charge of their own learning prompting them to select tools and resources to create, organize and package learning content to learn effectively and efficiently." PLEs support a more informal learning environment to supplement the formal classroom, and research shows that students need both formal and informal learning to be successful. This semester has been my first experience utili...

Welcome back to my weekly social media community feature! This week I'm going to share about Solid Starts. This may not be the most interesting topic, unless you also have small children like me, but it's a community that I am part of and checking in on constantly as I navigate the world of keeping my kids healthy and fed and attempt to keep them from becoming super picky eaters. A tall order in this world of fast food, frozen meals, and grandparents that don't know how to say no!  One of my favorite things about Solid Starts is that they have a free foods database on their website where you can type in almost any food (and they are adding to this all the time) and they will give a nutritional rating, description of the benefits (or lack of benefits), and how to cook/cut and when it is safe to serve to your baby (starting at 6 months usually).  The face of this account is Jenny Best, who has a super picky 5 year old who was the inspiration for beginning this account in the ...

 I've been on instagram for about 10 years. WOW. I didn't even realize it had been a platform that long. Anyway, so I just spent some time scrolling through my own instagram account, and it's been something of a journey for me. It is SO fascinating to see the transformation that has occurred and I'm curious if twitter will end up being similar too when I come back and look at it one day.  My journey began on instagram with zero purpose. My very first picture was of a milkshake that I was drinking and the cup says "find happiness within", my second picture is of a dvd of Doctor Who Season 6 pt. 1 that I downloaded off of my brothers laptop and decorated in the theme. Any Doctor Who fans out there? This was one of my favorite seasons, Matt Smith, bowties, Amy and Rory <3  Looking a little bit further you can just see the randomness in which I posted - people, food, environment, etc. I just posted whatever struck my fancy that day.. and there isn't anythin...

I'm not sure if I agree with the full extent of where this guy is going with his questioning (I don't think we are going to become cyber-people in the future), but I think he makes some great points about digital immigrants becoming digital natives regardless of their age! 

 So, I had this wonderful idea last night that I should do a weekly feature of the instagram communities that I partake in and why they are so great... usually as a fly on the wall, but hopefully I will become more active member as this class goes on and I get a bit more confident! Anyway, Sharon McMahon. America's Government Teacher. Curator of Facts & Fun. World Changer. Host of Government for Grownups. (All from her IG bio).  If you haven't heard of her or you don't follow her, go read this or watch this  to find out a little bit more.. or you can keep reading what I have to say. :)  The great thing about this community that she has created with her followers is that everyone is welcome.  She involves people through providing space to ask her questions (which she answers in her stories and shares her sources), answering her questions (which she then shares the results in her stories), and creating opportunities to give back to people in need. She is also...

Collaborative online experiences have been a part of our world for a while, but they are being refined and used by more and more people to share information, work together on projects, and bring improvement to long standing systems and processes. In Dr. Axel Brun's journal, "The Future Is User-Led: The Path towards Widespread Produsage" (https://eprints.qut.edu.au/12902/1/12902.pdf), he calls the participants of produsage 'Generation C'.  This entire journal was extremely enlightening on the development and sustainability of these types of online groups. Brun describes Generation C users as learners, consumers, and content creators.   This ability and desire to blend content and creativity reminds me of a concept that was employed often in the dance-theater company (Open Dance Project) I was a part of before having kids and deciding on a career change. It's called "YES, AND". If you haven't heard of it, it's a very common practice among impro...

This week marks the beginning of my personal journey into this world of learning technologies.  I honestly hadn't even heard of the phrase 'Web 2.0' until this class was an option for registration. Once I began researching though, I found out that it is something I have already been engaging in since the Xanga days (as a middle schooler)! It is interesting to look back on the development of Xanga to MySpace to Facebook to Twitter to Instagram and even sites like Reddit, Tumblr, and Flickr. I know I'm just naming the biggest names too. There are millions of 'Web 2.0' based communities online that continue to grow and change everyday to be more user-friendly, engaging, and in many cases, profitable. I am really looking forward to diving into this online world a bit more intentionally than I have in the past and become a more active part of the communities that capture my interests.  See you on the web! :)