The Path:

My journey started as a passion.  A quick review of my Flight Path and I realized that my ambitious goals have often tired me out as I try to accomplish them all.  As I explore new services and applications, I race against time to learn them quickly and implement them.  My goals as a result were plentiful and in many ways unfocused.  Never the less, I have tried to summarize my objectives for this course:

• Learn to assess digital tools more effectively.
• How to implement tools more effectively.
• Use Moodle to help me organize my teaching ideas.

The Runway:

Perhaps the best part about taking off was that I was a plane that wanted to fly everywhere.  The personal blog allowed me to document these ideas so that I could remember where I came from and for that I am extremely appreciative of.  In fact, “the journey” often became intertwined with ETEC 522 (the other MET course I am enrolled in).  This didn’t help in my changing destinations but it did help in allowing me to make stronger connections between the concepts.  The first of these were introduced in the E-Learning Toolkits.

E-Learning Toolkits:

The toolkits were provided throughout the course were pylons to keep me focused an on track.  I am naturally a curious learner and love new and exciting ideas.  As a result, I can easily “fly off course” on my journey.  I see this both as a strong positive that can lead me astray sometimes.  After all there is so much to see and learn with each passing day.

The toolkits were designed and released every 2-3 weeks which allowed me to stay focused on the task at hand and not get too far ahead of myself.  The one that was meaningful on so many levels had to be using SECTIONS from Bates & Poole (2003).  This carved my Flight Path and became important at how I viewed technologies that I used in the past and the new services that I ran across in this course.  Being able to place my experiences in a framework allowed me to adjust my expectations much easier.  In addition, provided me with questions that I could ask myself to see if my time was being used wisely.

Being able to assess an LMS/CMS using SECTIONS was also a wonderful exercise that allowed me to use my experience as a student (having gone through a series of VISTA courses) and now critically examine the benefits and drawbacks of the service.  In addition, the course proceeded to put me through the process of designing an online course.  In each section a new way of presenting media and content was introduced.  While none of these were foreign concepts, the conversations in the threads were extremely valuable as an educator.   In a recent thread discussing Music Videos (hypothetical situation about Dafna and alternative school teacher), the group’s conversation opened my eyes to the importance of ensuring equipment remains safe. As a primary teacher we are often aware of our student’s limitations, but it came to a surprise that in some cases, alternative students would go so far as to “destroy school property”.  After a minute or two of reflection, it became obvious, yet it surprised me that the students would go so far as to damage instruments.  This became a warning as to ensuring that a good rapport had been developed between students and teachers before such a project should be tried again.

Each case study was built in order to allow us to explore different aspects of our own course development site and to share our experience.  As the units continued, it became clear which ones would be more useful.  Again, it was the discussions that proved to be most valuable.  For example, in my mind DVD authoring was becoming very obsolete.  I had neglected to think about remote areas where the internet was not as accessible.  In this example and discussion — I could again see the value in DVD authoring.

Throughout the modules there were multiple scenarios requiring the students to provide a framework of the approximate time that it would take to setup a page or author a DVD.  At the times many of these were flat out guesses.  I hadn’t at the time seen the value, but it was clear that by setting up a prediction — we could learn to adjust our expectations and our goals to be more specific for our own course site design.  It was interesting to observe my predictions and how they changed throughout the course.  While I did have some prior experience — going through the process has undoubtedly changed my answers.

FInally, exploring the social media sections was what I enjoyed the most.  Being able to explore different tools to design and create a Digital Story provided me with the hands own experience.   My peers heavily influenced my decision about which tool I chose but I had no regrets about taking on the challenge.  Using SECTIONS, I was able to articulate my likes and dislikes about the tool Zooburst.  I know that being able to complete the critique of a tool was validation that my critical skills were sharpening.

Part of the toolkit that I found different from other courses was this blog itself.  I found it comforting to come here and jot up a blog when a thought came to my mind.  It was perhaps the synergy between all of my peer’s blogs, the discussion forums and my own blog that made this learning experience so valuable.

Experience 565A:

In my 4th term –this course along with ETEC 522, have proved to be most reflective and valuable.  I wonder if it is due to the synergy of the two working together.  I often lost track of where to post my thoughts as evident in an earlier post.  When I realized that I had posted it in the wrong blog (it was really the only one I had), I had a moment where I wanted to take the post off.    I decided against it as I found the blog a nice place for me to become reflective.  The blog became a comfort zone for me this past semester.  I found myself reaching out on the forums a lot more than I had in the past as there was a sense of comfort after a year in the program with the people and the way the posts came through.  I became particularly interested in one of our colleagues as she was in the medical field.  It was engaging to see the different perspectives of how learning technologies could be implemented in different fields.   In addition, another colleague provided valuable feedback with many of his posts and I was able to further my confidence in the way that I approached teaching.  For example, in one of the discussion threads regarding the hypothetical situation, Dafna, we had gone back and forth on going forward with combining digital technology and musical instruments in an alternative setting.  After many of our colleagues had voiced their hesitation with allowing alternative students to use school equipment in this manner, I took a step back.  In fact another colleague did as well. We conferred and agreed that it was important for both of us to remain optimistic about these students as we (As teachers) were often the only ones left to give these kids a chance.  It was empowering and uplifting for both of us.  We moved forward by taking our colleague’s stories as a warning.

What is next?

Continuing right where I left off.  With myself almost half way through the MET program, the “journey” has been uplifting. During this past semester I took a bit of time away to apply for the Google Teacher Academy.  Part of the application process had me produce a YouTube video about classroom innovation as well!  It was daunting to think that I could have time to do this on top of the coursework and teaching.  There was definitely a renewed sense of confidence in my ability to be an active member in the online community.

As I prepare myself to leave ETEC 565a — I don’t see my desire to accomplish many ambitious goals as a hinderance but as a way for me to expose myself to different ideas.  One way to think about this is in the form of a dart board.  Trying ideas and exploring many of the tools that we have available to us online and in the real world is like throwing darts at a dart board.  Most of them don’t land in the bullseye but the one that does is often the worthy of a good shot!

References:

Bates A. W. & Poole, G. (2003).A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In A.W. Bates & G. Poole, Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education (pp. 75-108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 4.