My passion for education and commitment to my students' growth has always driven me to seek new ways to enhance my teaching skills. Embarking on the journey of earning a Master's degree in Applied Digital Learning (ADL) at Lamar University has been an exhilarating and transformative experience. This blog post serves as a final reflection on my journey, highlighting the bursts of inspiration, the challenges faced, the milestones achieved, and the invaluable lessons learned along the way. Join me as I look back on this incredible educational adventure and share the insights that have lit up my path, just like fireworks illuminating the night sky.
This reflection for 5315 and 5320 will be the last of the program, and while I am excited to move on to the next chapter and use all that I have learned, I am happy that I have the opportunity to really sit down and reflect on these past eight weeks and what I learned.
I am lucky enough to have created a group at the beginning and they include myself, Shaneigh Smith, Deena Fell, and Mattheiu Brooks. As always my group has been a life saver and kept me sane while I dealt with being a baseball mom, a teacher on summer break (if that even is real), and they were even there for me to lean on when we went through Hurricane Beryl and I was without power for over 6 days. I don't know what I would have done without them.
What went right?
I am proud of all that I have accomplished with these two classes. While our 5320 class has given us an opportunity to go back to the beginning and update our innovation plan and change what our original plans were, our 5315 class showed us how we could give our innovation plan more leverage with action research. I feel both classes went really well and I was excited to have Dr. H as a professor again.
My COVA reflection let me see how even from just the beginning on the program my learning and teaching philosophies have changed. That was very insightful and gave me true insight into how I will continue to learn and teach moving forward.
One of my favorite things was the literary review that we were tasked with. I was able to take my first literary review and look deeper into the studies and really see how ePortfolios can benefit students in the elementary classroom.
What could be better?
This summer was a doozy for me. My son made it to the All Star Baseball team and we have been nonstop baseball since before school was even out. I am so proud of him and I had to put being a baseball mom first because it was such an amazing opportunity. Even as I write this I am 4 1/2 hours from home sitting in a hotel room because they made it to the World Series!
So as you can imagine, time constraints were a real issue this time around. When I was finally able to take some time for classes, our area was hit by Hurricane Beryl and we were without power for 6 days. Even with all of these things against me, I had a team who was there to support me, Deena even offered to house me, and a supportive family who was there to offer help. I am one lucky girl.
My Contributions
Throughout our time in both classes I did my best to make contributions to not only myself but to the people in my group and in my classes. I took part in the discussion posts on time with my initial discussion post and responding to others.
In my group I made sure to celebrate all our wins and listen to their struggles and attempt to help them in any way I could. For each assignment I gave them feedforward and made adjustments based on their advice. We have a strong group who I knew I could rely on and depend on to keep me up to date when I was unable to attend meetings.
Matthieu created another awesome GoogleDoc for us to stay updated and see what everyone is working on. It is so helpful to have all of those things in once place and I am so thankful to Matt for creating it. I am still a member of the Facebook group and when someone posts and I am able to help, I always do.
These past eight weeks were fast and furious. While I thought it would be the easiest because I wasn't working full time, I struggled the most. I am so proud of what we have created. Not just our work and ePortfolios but our friendships that will last much longer. I can not wait to meet them when we walk in just 15 days!
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