Extend was a great resource to explore. As my project focus shifted, so did the direction of my Extend assignments. Initially, I thought I would explore the technologist and/or collaboration modules as they felt applicable to my initial ideas. I’m experiencing a change in my teaching position which may not leave me with a full time classroom of my own. Because of this I’ve decided to explore the Experimenter Module as I foresee it being beneficial to the shift happening in my professional life. Several of the online tools highlighted throughout the module were new to me, as teachers we are constantly experimenting with new strategies, tools, and resources so I found this exciting. I’ve never created a Padlet nor a Google Form; however, I have been a participant,though I did use Canva in the OLTD 501 course and found it frustrating. This time I chose to have some fun with it, take the time, dabble around, and the more time I spent experimenting, the less challenging it became…. Surprise, surprise, practice makes ‘manageable.’ I think Google Forms is something that is extremely useful, for example I wasn’t aware that responses could remain anonymous, I know some parents who would really appreciate that. I like that there were several options in formulating questions; check multiple boxes that apply to you, commenting, multiple choice, etc. When I created the Padlet I realized how powerful it was as a brainstorming tool and how much instructional time it could potentially save. I thought about how much time teachers spend selecting students to share their thoughts, but also about our shy students who might prefer to use a platform like this to express their own thoughts and ideas. What struck me most, was that all of these activities weren’t time consuming at all, proving the point that implementing online tools, whether synchronously in a F2F setting, or asynchronously, shouldn’t be a daunting task. It just takes a little curiosity and experimentation to get the ball rolling.
Extend Experimenter Activities
Activity One
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HjsCREQFROnUUjVaedwme0mWqfqJ7R2xWLk0zzsubhI/edit
Activity Two
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R5NKiLjJbetTA2ZFQLGfDLSHT8o2kPfI/view
Activity Three
https://padlet.com/marleedunlop/20wminc26q7x5nxt