My passion is the development of sustainable communities, and I firmly believe that education is a key driver to achieve this.
Having been born and raised in middle-class Philippines to hardworking parents, I lived a fortunate life protected from a lot of the hardships that the country still faces. Moving to Canada when I was 13 eventually afforded me the chance to travel solo back to my motherland and explore SE Asia – this is when my eyes were opened to the poverty that millions of others live with daily.
From here I explored various passions – I traveled around India, spent working stints in New Zealand and the UK, and volunteered as a care and youth worker in Calcutta, London and Vancouver. I met incredible people: Mr. Book in Myanmar who started a micro-financing society to teach women the business skills to create a livelihood; the women in Vancouver who have experienced sexual assault and who are trying to grasp the resources to start over; the women living with developmental disabilities in Calcutta who are learning math and the sciences; and the homeless youth in London who search for skills for employment to rebuild their lives from scratch.
Currently I work for a project that uses learning interventions to overcome socio-economic barriers that lock women and girls out of economic participation. In my current organisation, I was lucky enough to also explore projects and research on mobile technologies, specifically how mobile learning can help develop skills amongst migrant and displaced populations. Previously I have also worked in corporate Learning & Development with incredible financial and human resources, and also Training & Development for a resource-poor charity.
My travel, volunteer and work experiences have all taught me the importance of one underlying concept: that learning, in all of its forms, can positively impact the lives of people.
What I’d like to learn from this course is how to create contextualised learning experiences to address the needs of and bring learning to the hands of those diverse populations. Upon reflection, many of the questions I’m posing touch on the seven principles outlined by Chickering and Ehrmann (1996). I’d like to widen my knowledge base and become somewhat of a (novice) expert on the current suite of learning solutions currently on offer along with their pros and cons. I’d like to come out of the course with a clear idea of an evidence-based approach in selecting and deploying learning technologies, and at the same time, feel tuned into what we can expect in the future.
This seems like a big abstract ask, so this assignment actually is quite helpful to break down some areas I’d like to touch on.
- How do we select and employ digital technologies that can effectively create highly-engaged online communities of practice (CoP)? How can social media be used most effectively in order to mobilise learning communities?
- What are the current successes of mobile learning, and what can we expect in the future?
- In what scenarios can using an LMS be ideal? What are the current deviations from the traditional LMS, and what LMS solutions we are likely to see in future?
- How can learning technologies support the emerging area of personalised learning?
- How do we use learning technologies to embed a culture of learning and feedback within organisations?
Very excited for this course!
Chickering, A. W., & Ehrmann, S., C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6. Retrieved from http://www.aahea.org/articles/sevenprinciples.htm