Patricia Estrada

I am accostumed to assess and identify different personalities in students, however, I had not made the connection with their learning style. I will pay closer attention in the future. 

These personality assessments always fascinate me. I have done Myers-Briggs and Colors before and didn't know too much about the others. I was able to identify my personality in some and there is overlapping. I disagree, however, on where I fall on the table - I'm in 3 different columns. 

Microblogging is what most millenials are probably comfortable with. It is exciting to see the possibilities and different uses of these microblogging sites. I'm glad a rubric was introduced and how it can be modified for microblogging. 

This definitely opens up additional opportunities to engage students in active learning in a modality that they fully understand. Up until now, I would have thought that engaging students through social media is not encouraged. The requirement to create a separate group to keep students and personal information separate makes perfect sense. 

In the portion of the course, I learned that it is best to be a facilitator of learning at times as well as facilitating the course content. This portion is describing how crucial the timing and content of instructor responses are to discussion boards. I have experienced that if I give away the "punchline" too early, many of the students who have not responded will give very similar responses. I have since tailored my response to be encouraging and to ask questions to keep the discussion going without giving an outright message of correct vs. not correct right away. I… >>>

This portion reminds me that it is okay to advise a student to seek out remediation options if they have poor communication skills. I have had students that have struggled with written and oral communication and aside from giving them tips here or there, I have been a bit hesitant to advise they seek out additional help. I guess I felt that they have enough on their plate with course content. 

It has become clear that in the past, I may have taken for granted that all students read the school catalog and the blurb in each course syllabus about professional language and communication. In the future, it is important to clarify and model what good communication looks like more specifically. Ex. not using all caps, explaining proper netiquette and effective use of punctuation. These skills are crucial to the student's development and skills that will no doubt be helpful in their professional careers. 

It is important to research different technology tools based on the different circumstances. i.e. size of class, course, amount of participation necessary etc. As instructors, we may get comfortable with one tool and expect it to be effective for all circumstances, but this may not be the case. I think that it is also important to realize that our students may be more comfortable with some technologies that is not our comfort level, but we must learn to adapt and continue to expand our horizons. 

This is a fun way to start the day!! Thanks for sharing!