Reflecting on Digital Writing

Creating a blog and posting a new blog almost every week was something very different for me as this was my first blog I have ever created! I have really learned a lot about myself as a writer, mainly that I tend to write more when I am writing about something I enjoy. I found that my favorite blog posts were when I talked about something I had done recently that was exciting, such as diving or going to a football game. I have also learned a lot about digital writing in general. Like I said, this was my first blog, so just figuring out the way blogs work and how to post a new blog was a learning experience alone. But I also learned how helpful blogs can be, in the professional world and in the classroom. This blog was a great experience because each week I had comments posted on my blogs. It was nice to get such instant feedback from my peers. I also learned that digital writing can be extremely useful in the classroom. In my future classrooms, I would love to use blogs as a means of revising. A blog can be a great space for revising a paper because you can go back and see your previous versions and reflect on the progress you have made. This would be great for students because they could make revisions based on the comments their peers and their teacher have made on their drafts, then use those comments to revise and make a new draft.

Overall, I had a great experience digital writing. Considering this was my first blog, I am pleased with what I have created in my weekly posts. I think that the hardest part for me was deciding what to write about on the open post weeks. When it comes to writing in general, I think that one of my weaknesses is coming up with an idea. However, I think with the right guidance, digital writing could be very successful in a high school English classroom.

Professional Text

For the professional text, I chose The Digital Writing Workshop by Troy Hicks. I chose to read this text because I was interested in how I can use digital writing in my future classroom. I definitely learned a lot about how digital writing should be used in a classroom, all of which I could implement into my own classroom. Out of everything I learned, I think the most important was that digital writing should not simply be mimicking normal writing in the classroom, only doing it on the computer. Instead, teachers should become innovative in creating new ways to use technology for writing. One of my favorite techniques mentioned in this book was the use of blogs for draft writing. Hicks explained that blogs can show progress over time, so if a blog is used to save different drafts of writing, students can easily scroll through and see how far they have come in writing. Before reading this text, I had never put much thought into how technology can be used for drafting. In most of my high school experience, your rough draft was written on notebook paper, edited, then resubmitted corrected and typed. But the notion of blog drafting is a great concept because students do not just throw away their old drafts, and they can get comments from their peers and teacher on their drafts as well. Aside from this, another important aspect of digital writing which I was reminded of was using web documents such as google docs. I used google docs for group projects in school and enjoyed it because we could work “together” without physically being together. However, what I learned from this text was that google docs saves all of the drafts created so that students can go back to any previous version at any time.

Overall, I learned that digital writing can be beneficial in many aspects of writing. It can help students plan, draft, and look back on previous versions of their work. It can show students how far they have come in their progression of writing over a period of time. Digital writing not only improves student’s writing capabilities, but also their technology skills, both of which could ultimately help them to be successful in future careers.

“Holidays”

I have worked in a restaurant since my senior year of high school. While the money and flexible hours makes it the perfect job to get me through college, there are definitely a few drawbacks to the job. To me, the biggest drawback is not having weekends and holidays off. Not having weekends off is bad enough because you get off of work and go on instagram to see pictures of your friends doing all kinds of fun weekend stuff (it helps to have best friends who also work in the restaurant industry). But holidays are the worst because this is the time when my family spends time together. Granted, I do have Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day off, which I am thankful for. However, I have worked just about every Christmas Eve, New Years Eve, New Years Day, 4th of July, Easter, Memorial Day, and Labor Day for the past five years. The only time I have these holidays off is if I request off at least a month in advance. It’s frustrating to see families coming in together on these days because it makes you wish you were spending time with your own family. Although this has been frustrating for me over the past few years, it has also been a motivating factor for me to hurry up and graduate so that I can start teaching and have weekends, holidays, and even Summer off!

A New Batchelder

Since my last open post, I feel like a lot has happened in my life! Between seeing Luke Bryan and Garth Brooks, diving Blue Grotto (awesome dive!), and going to the Miami Dolphins game, I have been extremely busy in the past few weeks. I feel like I have been all over the state of Florida, not to mention working and trying to keep up with school work. But out of all of these exciting things, the most exciting was the Dolphins game because it ended up being life changing. As a tradition, my dad, my stepmom, and I make it a point to go to at least one Miami game a season and we always bring along a lot of family and friends. So this day started like any other game day, we all tailgated and grilled together, then headed in to the stadium to find or seats. About fifteen minutes before kick off, I was standing in line with my dad to get food when my dad told me he was about to ask his girlfriend, Courtney, to marry him! I already call her my step mom because they have been together for six years and she is my sister’s mom, but I immediately freaked out. The rest of the walk to our seats, I was shaking and could not even look at Courtney. I think I was reacting this way just because I was so excited for Courtney and knew she was going to be completely shocked. So, once we found our seats, everyone someone suggested we go take pictures by the field (By the way everyone else we were with had known about this for a month). As soon as we got to the bottom row in the end zone of the stadium, my dad got on one knee and told Courtney he had something to ask her. In typical Courtney form, her first reaction was, “No…shut up.” Of course she ended up saying yes, but at first she was completely shocked and honestly thought my dad was messing with her and that the ring was my aunt’s ring! We enjoyed the rest of the game although we lost and I think Courtney was still in shock. The most amazing part of the whole thing was that my dad told us he proposed at the stadium because he knows it is a place we will be going to for the rest of our lives and now we will always have this memory there. And anyone who knows my dad knows that planning something and actually keeping it secret is an almost impossible task for him, so I was extremely impressed that he kept this not only from Courtney but also from me for over a month.

Tech exploration 2- Create something!

I used picfont.com to create this picture:

I love pictures like this with quotes or sayings on them because they can be inspirational and of course they look appealing. I was surprised at how much I had to play with this website before I could get my picture to look how I wanted it to. I think this website could be very useful in schools for teachers to decorate their classrooms with motivational quotes. Also, students could create projects using this tool if it fit the requirements of the project.

Technology Exploration

Looking through the sites listed on the slide, I would probably consider myself a visitor. I noticed that I only use about a quarter of the sites, and have only heard of about half of them. Most of the tech I use is texting, email, and some social media sites.

One of my favorite sites to enhance student learning was Slide Share. I think this site is a great idea because whether a student was absent or just wanted to study from a PowerPoint, they can find them right here on this site. Also, teachers can share slide shows with each other. This could be great for teachers in the same school or for teachers not even in the same state to find ideas for their peers. Scribd would be a great site not only for students to find books to read, but also to post writing which students have completed. This site would allow students to have a much larger audience than they are used to, which could motivate their writing. I also think Skype could be useful in holding conferences with parents and/or students. Although I would rather meet face to face, using Skype could definitely be useful in situations where the parent’s work schedule may not allow for them to come in for a conference during normal hours.

After teachers leave school, they keep learning mostly through professional development. This typically takes place face to face however I now know that professional development can take place virtually as well. Virtual professional development seems interesting because instead of just communicating with teachers in your school or district, you can communicate with and get ideas from teachers all over the country. I noticed that a lot of virtual professional development takes place through blogs and through sharing ideas. I think this is great because the more ideas we can acquire the better.

It’s important to get students to write virtually because this expands their audience. Usually, the only audience a student has for their writing is their teacher and maybe their peers. But if they know that they are publishing their writing for more people to see, students usually feel motivated to create better writing. I think that these sites are interesting because they provide so many creative ways students can complete assignments ranging from writing to creating graphics and videos. However, the risks of these sites is that the internet is available for everyone to see, so you have to make sure what your students are posting is okay to be on the internet, and not harmful for themselves or for anyone else. A couple of my favorite sites were Prezi and Picfont because I think these are different means of presentations which students would enjoy.

In Jane Hart’s slideshare, I noticed that most of the techs in the top ten are sites that most students probably use very often. I also noticed that most of these techs are used for collaboration between students and between the student and the teacher. I also noticed that some were techs that students could use to research, but not as many as you would expect.

When choosing to integrate technology, I need to consider the fact that technology needs to be scaffolded. I can’t just start my students off creating a presentation and sharing it without first being sure they understand and can apply, analyze, and evaluate the information which is going into the presentation. Each piece of technology can work together and build upon the last so that students create writing and presentation which shows their use and understanding of the technology and the information they are presenting.

Based on my tech exploration, I think I will definitely use some of these sites in my future classrooms. I definitely want my students to publish their work in online forums so that they can have a larger audience and therefore feel more pride in their work. I also plan on using some of the virtual professional websites I found in this tech exploration. I think that professional development is very important for teachers because education continuously advances and changes, especially with technology being such an important factor. So professional development is a great way for teachers to stay up to date on these changes.

My Diving Experience

Since the majority of the comments on my introduction post had to do with diving, I figured I would write my next post on just that. As I said in the introduction post, I have only been certified for about a year and a half. So I am still kind of new at this and have only logged four dives since my certification dives. For my cert dives, we dove both Deleon Springs and Blue Springs. Deleon Springs was neat, especially since it was my first open water dive, but I really fell in love in Blue Springs.

Blue springs is amazing because it has a spring head which is actually about 120 feet deep, but you can only go to 60 feet. There are shelves all the way down this hole, so that you can sit or stand at various depths. While you are resting on these shelves, it is fun to look at the walls because people have carved their names and different sayings into the rocks. I not only dove Blue Springs for my certification dive, but my boyfriend and I also returned this Spring to dive it again by ourselves. This time was amazing because there was a manatee who did not want to leave the spring head even though all of the others had migrated since it was warming up. This manatee loved to watch the scuba divers and even tried nibbling on my tank!

Manatee Selfie

Manatee nibbling on my tank

Aside from diving Blue Springs, we have also dove out of Palm Beach inlet. I loved diving here because the reef was beautiful and we saw so many fish and this was the first time I saw a sea turtle while diving! I love sea turtles so it was amazing to be able to see one 60 feet deep on the ocean floor.

Recently, we have dove The Living Seas aquarium at EPCOT. This is the aquarium at the end of the Nemo ride. We heard about this dive through word of mouth, which is really the only way you will hear about it. Disney does not advertise this because they do not want it to get too busy and be booked up  months in advance. This was an amazing experience because you get to see hundreds of fish that you would not get to normally see. My favorite part was the fact that we were able to get within a couple feet of sharks and sea turtles. It was such an amazing experience that we decided to do it again, just a few months after the first time, and we look forward to going again one day!

This is basically my scuba experience over the past year and a half. In the near future, I am hoping to dive Devil’s Den and do some more diving out of Palm Beach inlet. I always encourage anyone to at least try diving once. I was scared before becoming certified because I thought I would feel claustrophobic, but that was never the case! I have always felt so comfortable and at ease while underwater, and I have truly fell in love with the feeling of breathing underwater!

Introduction

Hello! My name is Coral Nicole Batchelder, and I am currently in my fourth year as an English Education major at UCF. I love reading and I hope to share this love for reading with high school students in the near future. Aside from being a full time student, I also work part time as a server at Sonny’s BBQ. This definitely is not a job I want for the rest of my life, but I usually come home with some interesting stories, and it pays the bills.

Outside of work and school, I love to fill my free time with the things I love. Topping this list is my love for water. I became a certified Padi scuba diver about a year and a half ago. Since then, my boyfriend and I have logged dives in amazing places such as Blue Springs, off the coast of Palm Beach, and even the Living Seas aquarium at EPCOT! I have found  love for the underwater world in a way that I never imagined I could have, and I look forward to many more dives in my near future!

Not only do I dive in the ocean, but I also like to relax on the shore. I live about ten minutes from Playalinda beach, and spent most of my life living about twenty minutes from Cocoa beach. So a lot of my time on the weekends and during Summer while I was growing up was spent at the beach with my friends. Although I love to find adventures and hang out at the beach, I also enjoy my quiet time. I find this time through reading, which I have loved since I was little. I have a variety of interests, hobbies, and goals, and I am looking forward to sharing these in the first blog I have ever created!