Précis of Flight Path
In my flight path in the beginning of the course, I had mentioned that my goals through the MET program were:
- To learn about good course design
- To gain specialized skills and knowledge
- To complete a Master’s degree
My reasons for these goals was that I want to increase my skills and knowledge, (and the piece of paper) to have some security in the work place, and perhaps even advance my career. I enjoy the work that I do as it allows me to be creative, and input my ideas into the use. I want to make sure that my skills can support that.
I also had mentioned that I was not keen on the world of business creeping into education to the degree it has been. And that I don’t like the idea that educational institutes are letting these businesses access to thier students.
Overall ETEC 565A Experience
It’s funny how a few months can change a person’s perspective. While my goals are essentially the same as I had indicated previously, some of my other perspectives have changes. For example, I was focused on the “negative” impacts that business could have on education, and I had failed to see the “positive”. In our Week 12 discussion and readings, the importance of economics (Alexander, 2014) as a driver for positive change in education became apparent to me.
I think the next few years will be interesting as far ed tech. Especially with rising costs of education, it will be particularly interesting to see how MOOC’s and non-traditional education fares.
Overall, the ETEC 565A was confusing initially. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a course, which was split over 2 LMSs, and involved contributing to two blogging sites as well. And for me with the badges, it got to be to much detail, I ended up not following up on the badges in my classes as much. Note: my other class this semester used badges as well. Badges became another little thing I need to remember to do.
Once I understood the reasons for the two WordPress blogs, I really thought that part worked well in the course. It makes sense for the class to have a “shared” space, and for individuals to have their “personal” space in WordPress as well.
Next Steps
In terms of my practice in educational technology, I definitely want to explore some more technologies, some of which I learned about through the MET courses, or other students in the courses. I also use social media to keep up to date about ed tech. Here are some of the things I am planning to learn more about:
Edaura
This is an LMS that was founded by a MET classmate. I would like to explore it some more, and perhaps test it out with some actual content for teaching.
Grav
I learned about Grav from a LinkedIn post by a thought leader in educational technology . Grav is an open source CMS which would be able to serve as a LMS.
Adobe Slate
This was used by a classmate for her digital story assignment. I really liked the way the information is presented using Adobe Slate. Also on the Adobe website there are some examples of it being used for collaborative school projects, reports and school newsletters. I want to explore the potential in creating assignments that students can work on together using this tool.
FutureLearn
Tony Bates refers to this MOOC platform when he describes a brief history of MOOCs (Bates, 2014). I’ve checked out some MOOC course on EdX and Coursa already, but I am curious about FutureLearn. Currently I’ve signed up for the Learning Online: Learning and Collaborating course that started today. I’m sure this would have been useful for me at the beginning of the MET program. It’s a short course, and my interest in it is to see how it is facilitated and how it compares with other MOOC’s I’ve taken.
Makerspaces
I heard about the maker movement a few years ago, when I was invited to Makerfaire Vancouver. A short while later I started to hear more and more about the maker movement and educational technology. The New Media Consortium’s report identifies it as a major trend in education, and discusses the interest by universities to include makerspaces as interdisciplinary “hubs” (2015, p.41). I intend to attend the Vancouver Makerfaire again this year, and learn more it.
One practise I really appreciated throughout the MET program is the sharing of information by instructors and students. I will make a point not only to learn more about ed tech, but to share what I have learned as well.
References
- Alexander, B. (2014). Higher education in 2014: Glimpsing the future. Educause Review, 4(5) Retrieved from: http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/higher-education-2024-glimpsing-future?
- Bates, T. (2014). MOOCs. In Teaching in digital age. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/chapter-7-moocs/ (Chapter 5)
- New Media Consortium. (2015). NMC Horizon Report 2015: Higher ed edition. Retrieved from http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2015-nmc-horizon-report-HE-EN.pdf