Case Study: Speech Generating Devices

For my case study, I looked at speech generating devices; technology that assists students who are unable to use speech to communicate effectively.  Please see the attached Google Doc that goes along with the following Presentation.

EdTech Unconference

I began my work for this blog post, frustratedly trying to follow #edcampla virtually via Twitter.  But, on the night this post was due, I still had not been able to gather enough of a sense of the content of the conference to write much of a post at all.  When I brought this up, my instructor advised me to check out #cue14 instead.  The difference was stark!  While most of the tweets that I read for EdCampLA were positive, they lacked content information about the conference.  Tweets for #cue14, however, were full of interesting, relevant information that was helpful to me even without having physically attended the conference.  One resource that I found especially helpful, was the Cue14MegaDoc, a shared Google Doc that contains information, feedback, and reviews of all the individual presentations.  In addition, there were further links that I was able to follow whenever I found a topic of interest.  It was apparent to me that attendees of Cue were aware that many people would be following along on Twitter in the hopes of gleaning meaningful information about the presentations they were unable to attend in person.  Not only was meaningful information tweeted out from each of the presentations, but the attendees were participating in an ongoing conversation with eachother - clarifying, questioning, and contributing to each others' experience.  While the EdCampLA twitter feed left me questioning what the conference was about, Cue14 piqued my interest in getting a front row seat for the next event.

Ed Tech Article: 5 Ways to Get Better at Twitter

I have only recently begun to use Twitter, and at this point, I am using it exclusively for education-related purposes.  As a new user of the platform, I found THIS article to be helpful as I am learning some of the social rules and etiquette of the Twitter community.  I thought the advice to include at least a photo and a brief introduction in my profile was helpful and made a lot of sense.  I am not typically quick to put personal information out on social media, but the ideas included in this article were helpful as I try to determine what information to include about myself.  I also appreciated the article making it ok to unfollow people whose feed does not align with my purposes in engaging on Twitter.  I plan to continue to use Twitter as an educational, professional, and academic resource and tool and it was good to have the need to curate who I follow validated.

Video Blog: My Experiences With Twitter

This video is an explanation of my experiences on Twitter and my changing perception of the platform over the past 5 weeks.

A Master's and My Professional Growth

I decided it was finally time to pursue a master's for a whole jumble of reasons. I knew it was an inevitable step in my career, and that I would eventually need to do it. My husband is in a master's program that he began in August, and it seemed like a good idea to complete our programs simultaneously. I am in a new position at work, in a new sector of special education, and it is exciting to have a chance to focus on and learn more about this new role. But, even with so many incentives to pursue this degree, I began the program without a lot of thought as to how it would affect my practice as a teacher. But now, 4 months into my coursework, I can already see how it is pushing me to grow and progress as a teacher. Simply being a student again, myself, reminds me that being in school isn't easy, and that is making me a more empathetic teacher. The emphasis on technology is pushing me to rethink and reinvent old ideas and approaches that I have used over and over again. I am learning ways to be more creative, more efficient, and more connected to my students, their parents, and the education community. The freedom I have within the special education component of my program is also giving me the chance to focus on learning more about transitions, which is my new job. Within every special education course I have taken, I have been able to focus my research and investigation on this niche, which is helping me in tangible ways every day on the job. At this point, I am in the very beginning stages of this program, and given the many ways it has prompted professional growth already, I can't wait to see how much I will learn and change over the next year.