2017 Projects!

Alright, allow me get this all out: I am incredibly excited about this year! (Note all of the exclamation points)

I’m in my last “normal” semester of college, which leads me to my first project: LearningLit.com. This professional website is brand new and is being developed out of the Website Construction for Teachers class I’m taking right now. It started off as pretty plain, but I’m working on converting the whole thing over to WordPress to make the site compatible with multiple devices. My goal for this website is to create a hub for future employers to learn about me, for students and parents to access future class materials, and for education colleagues to learn about my research and projects.

Speaking of projects, I’m excited for an idea that I will hopefully be implementing in the next couple of years. My working title is “English Educraft.” Sounds interesting, right? The idea seeks to fill a gap I’m seeing in the Minecraft educator community, at least on the public level (I’m told that there have been several presentations on this topic at instructional technology conferences, though). In fact, the websites and blogs that I found weren’t very updated. So I am working on putting together Secondary English Education with Minecraft, and I’m planning on using it for my last English elective as an independent study! I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time over the summer and during next semester to develop resources for educators (and my future classroom) that incorporate Minecraft into English class.

But that’s not all! I’m getting ready to be in a high school next semester. I’ve already met with my co-operating teacher and even spent a few minutes with an instructional technology staff member there. This fall will be a practicum, and I will be student teaching with the same teacher the following spring semester. The experience will be unique in that I get to be with students a full year, from start to finish! Even better, I will be working on developing curriculum this summer for one or two new classes for next school year, and then I get to help teach them.

I’ve also been working on flexing my networking muscles. I recently got in contact with the host of the Education Talk Radio podcast and was invited to be a guest! We are recording in May, right after finals week. I’m going to talk about my experiences as a pre-service teacher.

Furthermore, next semester will include working on getting an official student affiliate status for the NCTE student organization I lead on my college campus.

I’ve got a lot on my plate right now with a month to go in this semester, but I am certainly looking forward to next semester! Now back to fixing up my website…