Making Progress!

My Genius Hour progress is still going fairly well! This week I explored a different way to demonstrate my progress; I decided to make a video of my Genius Hour project of learning sign language. However, I found a few difficulties with making a video. First, I noticed that when I was making the video, I was focused so much on remembering the sign, that I lost some important features of American Sign Language (ASL) such as some facial expressions as well as refined hand shapes. After watching the video back, I realized these issues and I can hopefully be able to address them in my next progress video and continue to improve the signs I already know. Another difficulty I have encountered while learning ASL is the different variations for each sign. For some particular signs, there could be from 1-3 variations. This is definitely confusing me as I'm not sure if I should be learning all of them or not!

Words & Sentences from: Vicars, W. (n.d.). ASL: 1 Lessson: 1. Retrieved from http://www.lifeprint.com/index.htm *

I see myself using Genius Hour in my classroom to emphasize my constructivist beliefs. Genius Hour is the finest example of student-centred learning! I love this quote from a high school student; the language she uses at the end...that the knowledge "takes root" really resonates with me because I want to provide learning for my students that is lifelong, and that's what I love about Genius Hour. 

Krebs, D. (2013, March 3). Genius Hour Quote [picture with quote].
Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrsdkrebs/8525173755

Overall, my technological skills related to education are definitely growing everyday, most related to completing my Genius Hour project. I have become well versed with Blogging and being able to change and customize blog settings, making and editing videos to include text (which I taught myself how to do for the video above), use Google Forms, Google Draw, Google Slides, PowToon, and many more online tools. In the past 6 weeks I have learned all of these skills which makes me hopeful that in the next few years my skills will expand even more to help bring technology into my classroom in positive and productive ways! 

*note: the purpose of this video is to demonstrate my progress of learning American Sign Language, not to serve as a lesson for learning ASL. Visit  ASL University to view the lessons that I learned from.