Final Challenge

Hey there, my name is Max, in the beginning of the course I was already familiar with some digital learning tools, since I’m a self-taught artist and English-Portuguese translator. However, I have- and still do- lost a lot of time finding effective tools, time that could have been spent actually studying instead. Unlike the majority of students in my class, I’m not in the second semester, this is my fourth one. I didn’t know what to expect from this semester since digital literacy is a very broad topic, but I’m pleasantly surprise to find out I did learn some things that are actually being useful for my life.

For example, I’ve got to know new learning tools I wouldn’t have found otherwise, as well as how to use them and why they’re effective. Perhaps the topic that was the most useful to me was the last one we studied, which was about analyzing learning apps according to Buckingham’s framework. It made me realize that some tools I previously knew and had in my mind as being good may not be very suitable for a classroom. It also has a very good chart to take in consideration while choosing what learning apps to use. Another thing I’ll be using for life is the website word cloud generator, it had never crossed my mind before that I could use a website to do that for my presentations. Overall, this was a very pleasant semester, especially with the gamification of Moodle.

To be honest, I’m loving online classes, I know this is a quite unpopular opinion, I myself absolutely hated online classes in the beginning, but I grew to love them. Specially because of how it is easier to organize what you need to do, taking classes from home saves a lot of time which allows me to work/study more. On the downside, I had little to no interaction with the teacher and other students, only what was necessary to do the tasks, which may be totally my fault but online classes make things more difficult. My favorite activities this semester were the interactive videos, though as far as I remember there were only 2 or so, I think they’re fun and very useful for learning, I wish every class had them. I’ve learned a lot about considering the students’ perspectives when using digital learning tools. There wasn’t any activity in particular that I didn’t like, I think maybe evaluating my classmates, it was hard to go ‘judging’ people I don’t even know, I didn’t want to offend anyone. I felt very comfortable and welcome in this course, there wasn’t any topic that I was expecting to be discussed that wasn’t. The only thing I’d say is that I wish the teacher would add more interactive videos! They honestly make learning much easier than some writing tasks (at least for me).

I will absolutely be using the knowledge I got from this course in my teaching practices, it made me realize the importance of bringing new technologies to class in today’s perspective. There are also some awesome teaching communities online to get ideas from that were mentioned during the course, which surely will be helpful for future classes when my creativity is lacking.

My performance probably wasn’t the best this semester, I’ve been working two freelance jobs besides college that took most of my time away so I agree I wasn’t the most focused or participative in classes. Obviously, I still wish I would get a 10 in my finals, but I know it isn’t a grade I deserve since some classmates were much more participative and productive than me, I could’ve done better. I have no idea what grade I deserve, so I looked at the ranking on Moodle and I’m currently on second place so I guess I didn’t do that bad haha so I’m going to say 9, I’d agree with less, though no less than 7 since I’ve at least done all the tasks and watched all the classes on real time.

Thank you for your attention!

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