Hi! Hello! Hi!

 My name is Anne. This is my blog for EME2040 at the moment, which is about educational technology. But this blog is also about me. I'm an important factor in this equation- I am the author,  after all. No novel springs from the tree fully formed, no statue of marble is freed from its stony cell until a chisel is taken to it, and this blog would not be if I were there to very haphazardly mold it.

This entry serves as a sort of the front porch of my brain, so welcome, wipe your feet as you come in, and sorry about the mess- if I'd known I'd be having guests, I would have picked up. There are things I enjoy that I probably would have made a blog about if I felt I had the mind and language to articulate what I wanted, such as Tampa Bay Rays baseball, or odd points in history that deserve more attention, or my various misadventures in thrifting and upcycling items wherein I enter a store hoping to find Garfield related merch and leave disappointed most of the time. I also love a themed event- my belated birthday party today is themed around the film Elvis (2022), and I'm making everyone dress like what they think Elvis looks like, which is probably just a less interesting version of Elton John. I will not apologize for any of those things. The time for being embarrassed about my interests has long passed. Cringe is lying dead on the floor, and unabashed, unbridled passion has killed it.

This post does have an educational end, believe it or not (despite how much I love shouting into the digital void). Alas, this is for a tech in education class, and so I must opine about the various platforms that have enriched my life in a classroom. Some of the above topics (mainly history, as they didn't offer AP Themed Events at my high school) and my understanding of them was expanded due to the technology we utilized in the classroom. Mainly Kahoot. Oh, people got into gladiatorial battles over that humble little program. You see, if you gamify a study program and then tell students they can earn imaginary points by being both fast and smart on a given topic, people turn to their baser selves. We say things we don't mean but can't take back only to not even end up on the podium. Oh, the shame. I never felt that in the Kahoots I participated in. I don't mean to brag, but I am very good at Kahoot. Then again, one is good at Kahoot the way Albert Einstein would be good at a science fair- if you have enough knowledge on the topic, you are bound to cruise to gold. I'm sure if you put Albert Einstein in a Kahoot about K-Pop, he would be crushed by the ARMYs and the CARATS every single time. But I mostly participated in Kahoots about history, which is something I both care about and am very knowledgeable in. So my memories of the program are very vivid, because I won a lot. It helped my peers study as well, because they wanted a taste of that meaningless glory that I so often savored. Probably didn't do wonders for my social life, but my ego remains unbruised, so who's the real winner here?

Oh, speaking of social groups! The networks I utilize for learning have evolved since my Kahoot days. My PLN these days is wide and varied, in terms of what I utilize. For some topics, I go to the place my peers throw hours into like coins into a wishing well- YouTube. The dearth of knowledge- real, credible knowledge- one can gain from such an accusable platform is astounding. Of course, the offline resources I have at my disposal due to my being a college student is also bountiful- the library, career liaisons, and the bubbling cauldron of information that are my peers all help me grow as an academic. I feel so lucky that I live in an age where I have so many resources at my fingertips that inundate my thirsty mind with a deluge of useful and relevant information, or information I didn't even know I wanted to know.

I suppose I need to stop tying at some point. I think this is a good point to do that. Perhaps I'll update this blog for non school assignment purposes, as I have found during the course of this post that I enjoy this quite a lot. Me, enjoying talking too much about my passions? Color me surprised. I have no clue how to end this. So, thanks for reading. Now, please put your shoes back on, and remember to close the door to my brain on the way out- I hate having a draft in there.