Reflection of the Semester

     This semester I’ve been lucky enough to retain a lot of information about exploring and creating my digital portfolio. While The Connected Educator taught me many new things, I also could not have learned everything I did without the help of Professor Calderwood. I have learned about social media etiquette, how to grow my PLN, and much more.

One thing that The Connected Educator taught me was to use a consistent username throughout all my social networks. I started to do that and I thought it was very helpful. I was always forgetting usernames and passwords so this really came in handy. It also told me that growing a PLN would take time, effort, and determination. Boy was that true! If it wasn’t for this entire semester I would not have known where to even start. I am now much more comfortable with social networking and understand how I can use it to my advantage. I was even lucky enough to have the honor of the author of The Connected Educator, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, follow me on Twitter!

Although I already had a LinkedIn account before this class, I never knew about the groups I could join. Groups allow you to connect with others, view and post jobs, and make business connections. I also learned a lot about Twitter. I never used Twitter the way I do now. I enjoy

mentioning companies and people, and even loved getting responses back! Twitter lists were also a new thing introduced to me. This was awesome because it organized my tweets into categories. It is very helpful, I believe, because twitter can sometimes get a bit overwhelming for some people.     

Throughout the semester I’ve used many new sites. One of my favorite ones was GoAnimate. We were asked to make a 2-minute commercial for our major. I never really used a site like this one before. It was also very easy to navigate through. Another new tool I learned to use was different types of presentation sites. Instead of just using PowerPoint, we were taught about Prezi, Google Slides, Powtoon, Office Mix, and one of my personal favorites, Haiku Deck. I used

Haiku Deck for two of my projects in this class, and even a project for another class. I know I will be taking all of these sites with me into future classes because they really are more interesting than PowerPoint; especially for a communications major.

     Every single thing I have learned from this class will stay with me throughout my career and life. I have learned when to, and when not to, post something. I know now to THINK before I post and watch my online reputation. I will always be professional and have the right sites to build good information of myself online. I also had the chance of having very creative classmates which made the experience that much better! Exploring Your Digital Portfolio, #GEN2243, has been a very rewarding class and I would recommend anyone at Stockton to try and take it!