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EDU 776 Reflection

Reflecting

It's crazy to me that I'm halfway through my first semester of grad school, and that EDU 776 is coming to an end. When I sat down and really though about how the class went, I realized how my  views of education in technology have expanded.

Looking Back
Photo courtesy of http://www.pinevillageks.org/ 2016/09/
a-look-back/memory-lane-road-sign/
When I first started this course, I was very comfortable with using technology in a personal setting. I've used it my entire life. But  the only professional exposure I had was when I made a separate Twitter account for undergrad. I had never kept a blog (unless you count Myspace), I had never built a website, I had never really researched using technology specifically for education. I knew people were using technology in education (my elementary school provided me with a MacBook in 4th grade) but I never really explored all the tools that were available. Throughout this class, I explored and learned about the incredible opportunities that exist online to promote learning with technology.

I think one of the hardest parts of this class was adapting everything to fit me. Since I'm not a teacher, I did have some trouble, especially with finding a Twitter chat. However, a lot of the tools and sites we learned about can be modified to fit into nutrition. I really think exposure to these resources helped me grow as a nutrition professional.


Moving Forward
Photo courtesy of http://blog.unroll.me/saving-
daylight-and-moving-forward
I discovered several resources that I hope to use again throughout my professional career. One of these tools is Adobe Spark. While this wasn't exactly something we learned about, it's something we had to use at the start of the semester. I had struggled to use it once in undergrad, but I felt much more comfortable this time around. Adobe Spark is wonderful because it allows the user to create informative videos that can be used to explain any concept, complete with music and pictures. Similarly, I look forward to experimenting with Animoto, another video creating tool. I learned about this site from a classmate's blog post, and look forward to using this site in my professional career.

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