Contribution to Learning & My Learning Family

These past 8 week courses are probably the fastest set of courses that I have encountered throughout the entire Applied Digital Learning program. I've contributed it to starting these classes while starting the beginning of a new school year, starting a new curriculum at our district, beginning of the year assessments, and life in general. As I progressed through these courses I could feel that the teacher burnout, school burnout was going to hit hard, but just as I was going to wallow in those feelings my core collaboration family, Allison, Colby and Pedro reminded me why having them as my team is what everyone needs to survive this program.

This set we made it through a few of our members getting Covid, sick children, wedding planning and graduation preparations. I have no doubt in my mind that without this solid support system we wouldn't have been as successful as we were. Much like a marriage, some days we weren't able to give 100%, so the others graciously picked up where we left off. Although they didn't have to, the relationship that we have established allows us all to remain confident that we will not get left behind.

Self-Assessing Score: 95

Core Group: Allison DeVoll, Colby Clifford and Pedro Beltran

I will admit to being fearful of both of these courses. The difference this time around was that I chose to use my Growth Mindset, and change that fear to excitement. Just because the course material is completely new to anything that I am use to doesn't mean I have to be afraid of it. In 5315, I was extremely appreciative of the Action Research Outline. This truly allowed me to gather my thoughts and organize them in a manner where everything started to make sense. Although I am not a fan of Literature Reviews, I understood the purpose and the reasoning which brought everything back into perspective. I was able to regain a solid understanding of what I was looking for in my Action Research Plan. I am excited to see the results and what future research comes from my data.

In 5317, I was mostly excited for our Podcasting assignment. My team and I had been dabbling with podcasting for a few months prior and I felt this assignment finally gave us the project we were craving. As far as the publication, which I will not be sharing online...YET (crossing our fingers for a publication), that was an entirely new adventure for me. I had hesitantly created my outline and was extremely grateful when we were informed we could create a co-publication because I absolutely believe that two heads are better than one. It really allowed my partner and I to put our brains together and see how blended learning can truly work for us all. Stay tuned for updates!

Although most of my collaboration group were taking the same courses, there was one member who was only taking one of the same courses with us. There was no doubt that we were still going to make this cohesive collaboration work, but I found it interesting that when she was discussing some of the things they were discussing in that course it allowed me to connect even more dots of my learning together. I wouldn't say I had forgotten what I learned, but rather it wasn't the focus but as she would bring up different topics, such as a 4DX as another measurement strategy, I really was seeing all the pieces come together in a different way.

Communication has been a vital part of this whole program. It continues to prove how important it is to be successful not only in this master's program, but throughout life. My team and I have religiously used GroupMe and Zoom, and we have had extreme success with it as you can tell from the video. It allows us to have a consistent platform that we all can navigate with ease.

The feedforward that I received from these two courses has definitely helped and improved my learning. Not only did the rubric that my team and I used during our publication editing improve my writing, but it also helped my look at my peers work in new ways. I appreciated the feedforward I received from both professors because it felt genuine and came from a place where they wanted to me to be successful. I am finally feeling the shift from feedback to feedforward. I'm able to take what is given to me and make my work better.