Reflection Time

It is hard to believe another eight weeks have already passed!  One of the things I found helpful from this class was the blog posts.  Knowing that anyone could read what I write has helped me be more focused and attentive in my writing.  I appreciated having a topic to discuss or a question to answer.  It was interesting to see how others interpreted the question or topic and see the different ideas everyone had.  The one thing I know I want to do more of is responding to the comments on my own blog page.  I think that would help the discussion further and promote more of a sense of collaboration.  I would read my comments, but I rarely responded. 

The digital story was a fun and creative assignment.  While it was a challenge, I love how the each aspect was broken down into steps.  This not only helped me complete the assignment, but gave me ideas for how I would broach this type of project in a classroom.  Having walked through each of the steps, I understand better how the process works.

As others have mentioned, I wish I would have had more time for the infographic.  I had to complete some research and create a rough draft which took some time.  I then experimented with several different tools to find the right fit for what I had in mind.  While I am pleased with the final result, I think I would have benefited from having an additional week to complete the assignment.  

I enjoy looking back and seeing all the new things I have learned and experienced.  Now time to rest up for the start of a whole new set of learning!

Nutrition Infographic

This project was very challenging for me.  The first obstacle I had to overcome was simply picking the topic!  I finally chose to do something with nutrition.  My Cub Scouts are working on their Fitness activity pin and are required to plan a menu for a week and keep track of the foods they actually eat for a week.  After our last meeting, I realized the boys understand they need some of each food group, but do not really understand what a "serving" actually is.  I hope to use this at my next meeting and have them analyze how many actual servings of each food group they ate. 
The second major obstacle I had to overcome with picking the tool to create the final project.  I looked around at many different tools and even started creating the project in several of them.  The final project I created in Microsoft Word.  It had all the graphics I needed in one place, and I was pleased with the final result.  The one issue I ran into was being able to save it as a picture without the image being distorted.  After a bit of researching, I used Zamzar.  You do not have to register, but you do have to provide an email address so this might not be a good resource for students.  However, if you are ever in need of a different file format that the one you have, this might be worth looking into!