Reflections on the EDLD 5363 Web Conference

Dr. Abernathy assured us, during the conference, that she believes we are all able to make A's, and she assured us that the Lamar staff is to here help us.  The Lamar faculty has had a K-12 background, and we know and understand the K-12 environment. This information, along with Dr. Abernathy giving us her personal phone number, was an encouragement to me. 

Working in teams is encouraged because this is how the workforce operates today.  Dr. Abernathy gets a lot of feedback that students do not want to work in teams, but she tells us that our ISTE Technology Facilitator standards say we must learn how to share, collaborate, and assist each other. We are not here to learn technology by ourselves.  Technology integration is pushed by Lamar with the goal of having technology used by all educators and students to produce accomplishments. Open source Web 2.0 tools are free, and these can be a help in learning and teaching.  Sometimes they are blocked by school filters, but Dr. Abernathy encouraged us to teach others how beneficial these tools are for instructional purposes.  One way of showing administrators the possibilities is sharing the work our students produce.

We are not to be frustrated or overwhelmed by this program.  Our Ed Tech Leadership Faculty are open to daily conversation with us by any means.  "Our job is to support you," said Dr. Abernathy. Again, this is encouraging to me.  Yes, this program is challenging, but we are also learning online together.  The Ed Tech program is very strong and here to stay at Lamar.  Dr. Abernathy said many people at Lamar come to the Ed Tech leaders to get information and direction.

Regarding our partners, we can find our own and use different partners for different weeks. We have some freedom to make certain decisions on our own.  Weeks 4 and 5 are production and post production.  We do not get a grade for Week 4.  Week 2 we will do a Podcast.  Everything we do right now in Weeks 1 and 2 is leading up to Weeks 3, 4, and 5.  We must do creative commons in Weeks 3, 4, and 5.

Dr. Abernathy talked a little about closed captioning and working with deaf students.  Be sure we use what we need to with students that need assistive technology. Dr. Abernathy reiterated time and time again to call any one of the professors or assistant professors if we need help. How will we document the collaboration we have with our partners?  Google docs.  Dr. Abernathy recommended that we color-code our contributions.  She suggested that we keep the digital story very close to two minutes. Lamar needs documentation that everyone shared equally.  We must post our work and every other team members' work.  In Weeks 3, 4, and 5 we keep the same partners, and we may be posted different parts of our project.  We will have a complete picture of the project from each team members' work.

I will add that I found making my own digital story very rewarding.  Dr. Abernathy offered to share her digital story with us through dropbox.com.  My digital story is below.

My Digital Story -- Hope