Flight path
Show Me the Buffet!
Not being an active elementary or secondary school teacher, my experiences don’t necessarily fit into the NETS points. I do like this document, though, and plan to use it along with the Educause document to inform the way I teach my university classes, both on campus and on-line, and the way I support my faculty colleagues as an administrator.
Having developed several online courses and taught an on-line course for several years, I’m feeling very comfortable in teaching with and through technology…so much so, that I prefer it to classroom teaching now. I try to design my courses with a constructivist approach, including assignment choices, opportunities for reflective practice using blogs, and collaborative work using a wiki. The central component of my courses is the Discussion Forum. However, I find that undergraduate students are much more reluctant than MET students to initiate dialogues with each other.
One way in which I model “digital-age work and learning” is to let my students know that I am also an online student and I will share learning tools that I encounter in my own studies. I receive, mark and return assignments online, without killing trees directly. (Digital environmental footprint is a whole other can of worms…).
Professional growth comes from my MET studies, membership in the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education, conference attendance, brainstorming and collaborating with colleagues and testing ideas on my kids.
I would consider myself an intermediate to advanced user in most areas of digital online teaching. However, there are several areas I want to address through this course. I’m used to working with WebCT CE and Vista, and with Blogger – it’s time to learn how to work with moodle and WordPress. I can set up a fairly basic web-page, but I want to develop my skills here, especially working with images and graphics (I love the banners for our ETEC courses – can’t figure out how to create anything like them for the life of me – but I can edit text like nobody’s business). Digital copyright is another area I need to tone up on. Somehow, I find creative commons copyright confusing, yet I do want to respect the creative rights of others fully (btw, Natalie G. has been a helpful resource to me in this area). I can do some very basic video editing using QuickTime Pro, but have no idea how to do serious video creation (kinda wish I had a mac to use iMovie on instead of WMM). I’ve been using Skype to teach cello at a distance for a couple of years now, and have used Messenger since it first came out, but I’m sure there are still a few tricks I can learn to raise my level. I’ve just started using twitter (cellodav) and recognize that I’m a total neophyte at this. I don’t even have a mobile device I can use with twitter, just a basic cellphone with no internet plan.
I guess what I’m saying here is that I don’t have as much a “flight-path” as a plan to hover over the digital smorgasbord, picking and choosing as best I can, much like a wedding musician at an open-bar buffet between sets.
Cheers,
David
Tags: submitted, smorgasbord
