Digital Ethnography Reflection with Lesson Plan Link

As I thought about my video ethnography and lesson plan I was overwhelmed.  Where was I going to start?  What was something that I can do to show who I am?  For those of you that know me this caused many sleepless nights and then it came to me.

My principal had told me that my school district is looking at increasing parent involvement at my school and across the district this upcoming school year.  I have a good relationship with a lot of families at my school and she asked that prior to school starting I meet with her to discuss ways to increase parent/family involvement. 

My school is the only neighbor school in the entire district, this means that all of my students are within walking distance to the school.  Even though we are close to student’s homes there is a lack of parent involvement.  We no longer have a PTO or School Governance Council (basically a PTO that we tried a few years ago) even after moving the meeting to drop off time in the morning.  This past school year we tried “Circle of Care”, a support and educational group for parents and caregivers.  The most parents we had a meeting was FIVE.  We are a school with three hundred children and only five parents came to these meetings. This begs the question, “How can we get parents involved and stay involved’?  Which leads me to my ethnography.

My ethnography shows how with family and friends involvement students can receive support to help them be successful.  My ethnography is going to be used during Kindergarten Open House.  I want to show parents that with their support at home and my support at school this will help their children and their education.  I also want to use my ethnography to show my Kindergartners how family doesn’t have to be a direct relative but instead a group of people that care about them and their success.  Our School Motto is “Together We’re Better”; I think my ethnography shows that.

One of our Social Studies units is Individual Development/Identity and my ethnography lesson fits perfectly into that.  My students will get to learn a little bit more about me in a fun way.  It will be a little tough for my students to complete their own ethnography online so instead I will have them work on their family tree and important people in their lives. Students will then get to share it with their classmates and then post it to the classroom blog.

I am looking forward to sharing my ethnography with my students and their families.  It is a fun way for them to learn about me.  I was anxious about sharing my ethnography with family and friends but I wanted to hear their thoughts before I put it out for the world to see.  Everyone said that it was totally me with the pictures (don’t mind the crazy hair styles) and the music.  What I wanted them to understand is that I am where I am because of them and their support and encouragement that I have achieved many successes.  So even though this ethnography was an overwhelming task it was worth it and I look forward to using it in the future.

My Digital Portfolio, Final Draft..

As I make the final changes to my digital learning portfolio I want to thank everyone in the IT&DML program at the University of New Haven that gave me constructive feedback throughout this process.  I also want to thank my family and friends who also looked at my portfolio with a critical eye to make it something that reflected my learning, and me, which is a life long journey.

During one of our final classes I was able to show my classmates and professors my rough draft of my digital portfolio.  This is something that I was anxious about but I was happy to get feedback and suggestions to make my digital portfolio mine.  There was the suggestion of adding real pictures to each of the tiles on the homepage. I then thought I should make the tiles and the headings on each section of my portfolio the same.  Finding a way to get real pictures in the summer is tough but I went into my classroom and found parts of the room that I wanted to highlight.  As I looked at each of my classmate’s digital portfolios I thought off things I should add. I wanted to highlight my digital badges but wasn’t sure if someone looking at my portfolio would know what they were.  I then decided to add a link to share what digital badges were and then I added links to each of badges explaining each one in detail.  I also wanted to add a Creative Commons license because I wanted to make sure that my work was copyrighted.  I thought about adding music to my portfolio but then decided it would be too much.  Thanks to the feedback from my classmates and professors I made the changes and then was able to publish my digital portfolio and make it live.

Once my portfolio was live I was able to share it with family and friends and have them look at it not knowing much about digital portfolios.  I wanted to make sure it was easy to navigate as well as understand.  Finding typos and grammar errors were helpful as well.  I also shared it with the incoming students to the IT&DML program, it seemed like I had just done the same thing with the students that came before me but I was able to confidently share with them my digital portfolio and answer any questions they had.  It was nice to be able to tell the new students that the program is a lot of work but more than worth it because it will help them grow as professionals and help their students grow as learners.  I thought at that point I was done but then I wanted to share it with my classmates and professors once again to make sure it was ready for public viewing.

As usual my classmates and professors provided a lot of positive feedback and suggestions.  Thanks to classmate’s critical eyes they discovered a few more spelling and grammar issues but overall minor changes.  I am still on the fence about adding all of my blog, for now it’s all there but moving forward I plan to put a few selections so to not overwhelm the reader.  I decided to not add a link to my Facebook account because that is my personal space not my professional space like my Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.  I also added links to all of the text and pictures on my homepage to make it easier to navigate.  Finally I was then finished…

My digital portfolio is something that I plan on using and updating during my teaching career.  In a sense it will never truly be “finished” but for now it’s live and ready for the world to see.  Thank you to everyone for your encouragement, support, and suggestions through out this program.  In a way this “finished” digital portfolio includes each of you!