Category: Reflections and Comments

It’s May. The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, the sun is shining and I have begun my third MET course. The first week is ending and I am again struggling with the work load of full time school leadership and personal learning time. I am easing into the familiar schedule of early morning posts, late night reading and writing, and salvaging moments of personal time to be with family and friends.

The course outline has excited me in terms of what it will help me investigate in a structured and safe learning community. The first challenge was to use Wimba to post an audio message. Then to create an e-portfolio strictly for the ETEC 565 course. With that came the challenge to provide an RSS feed link. My first foray into RSS feeds. Then on to the readings and getting my thoughts organized for the first assignment – a ‘flight path’ for the course and for my MET journey. At this point, as I near the ‘retirement’ day from my thirty-two year career in a formal education role, it is a good thing to take time to reflect on what I hope to learn in ETEC 565 and in my upcoming MET courses.

For four days, I felt I was an online course designer. I was online, immersed in the topic, and focused on designing a course. With Jonassen, Anderson, and Bates & Poole at my side, and Wellman and Bloom as my guides, I was creating an online learning environment to support mentors do their work. During those unique four days I felt the content, community of practice and constructivist learning all merge together. My responsibility to my community – my fellow group members and personal interest in the topic were my motivations to solve problems, work through challenges and collaborate creatively.

Why only four days, despite the many hours spent on this project? Those four days were ones that I spent immersed in the material and tasks, constructing my understanding of process and product. Those four days I had focused, uninterrupted, dedicated time to spend reading, reflecting and reviewing the design proposal, related research, creating the design modules and writing the final submission. Through the many other hours spent on this project I felt like a player who briefly gets on the field, leaving me wanting more.

This group design project, through collaborative work on process and product, reflected the course outline we created for mentors. We worked through the process of coming together and being introduced to the topic. We learned about skills, barriers, and constructing the knowledge of course design together. We moved through a period of coaching and mentoring, where we supported each other to make the best decisions for the course design. Our community of practice came to common understandings of content, context and course outcomes. As a group, and as an individual, there was a transformation from ‘doing’ to ‘being’ on-line course designers.

Hypertext is something most people don’t even think about. It is just there. Those little blue letters are an invitation to click. The pointer moves over them and instantly turns into a hand that says, “Come see where I’ll take you.” And then the learning adventure begins.

The conventions for using and creating hypertext goes back to the early days of the internet and even before the internet was created. The work of Vannevar Bush, who wrote “As We May Think” inspired the work of Ted Nelson and Douglas Englebart. This led to work done by Tim Berners-Lee who developed the protocols for linking information on the world wide web. This work continues today through the W3C organization.

But what really fascinates me about hypertext is the mystery and magic in linking ideas, concepts and information that would not have been discovered otherwise. It is the unknown path that leads to new, undiscovered learning territory. It is the private and also social construction of my knowledge as I journey that path. It is making critical decisions about what directions I want to go, learning from the gems I find along the path, and knowing when I’ve gone too far. It’s about being in control but slightly out of control. It’s about reflecting on ideas and information that connect, resonate or disturb my thinking.

As I continue into this course on the design of on-line learning I reflect on the power and affordance of the little blue letters. Hypertext is amazing in its simplicity, powerful in its design, the conventions are apparent and the intentions are quickly understood by all.  To read more about this topic, link to the Wikispace.

The course, Design of Technology Learning Environments has begun. It started with a sampling of Last.fm music. Choices, likes, dislikes and new music evolved as music samples were input, new tunes discovered and old favourites were enjoyed. I learned that there are many music genres that I enjoy and new tunes that I designated with a ‘heart’ or a ‘ban’.

The second task was to create a painting on Mr. Picassohead.(http://www.picassohead.com/).  Through this website, artwork in the picasso style can be designed. There are many models as examples that spur on creativity.

Then, down to reading and responding to material about XO and One Laptop Per Child in relation to computer design and curriculum design principles.

My last reflection mentioned this quote:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time. T.S. Elliott

Now at the end of this course, I look back to the beginning and see the journey I have come through to get here. My last reflection post was a reflection on mapping:

These readings challenged me to try to put myself on the map. 

So I looked for the place where ET fits on the map. The first map doesn’t have a place for educational technology, but ET feeds into every one of the technologies presented. As we work with students and integrate technology, every aspect and technology discipline is touched on through our work at the elementary level … it is not specific. The narrowing of the road tends to begin at the high school and continues into community college/university levels. 

The venn diagram map was astounding in clarifying and complicating my ‘world view’ relating to educational technology. The accompanying readings and real life examples helped to explain these world views. As I read through for the first time I thought …. oh my… I’m a radical humanist. (I was trying to find my place on the map). As I reread, I had moved myself further into the humanist, less radical. Maybe I need to reread and rethink … or maybe my place on this map will change each time I read it, because I am being shaped by the reading?! 

“Charts or maps are not neutral” and “Technology is not neutral” are two statements that really resonated. The concluding statement “the practice of education (with or without technology) is deeply theoretical. There is no such thing as education not informed by theory.” brought me right back to … where am I on the map? What theories inform how I educate .. with or without technology? What stance do those theories take? 

What world views (views of education) do I present as I write my essay? My daughter, who has become my editor, presented the idea that I speak of education as process rather than product. I had not thought of that, nor did I explicitly state that view, but it was evident in the ideas and concepts I was presenting. That brought me to … I am not neutral and I can never be neutral when it comes to educational technology. I need to be aware of where I am coming from and what my interests are. Then I can become more aware of where others are on the map in relation to me … and not see their position as adversarial, but just as it is… that’s just where they.

One final thought as I was reading through and trying to put myself on the map… I made the connection of ‘google maps’ to this course. On google maps you can zoom right in and get down to the street views, but once there you can’t see the big picture. When you have the long view, you can see the big picture, but you can’t see the details. This is just what this course has done. During each module we went into the street view of the topic and looked for the connections to educational technology. Now we need to zoom out and look at the big picture… how do all these ideas intersect or are they running parallel? Do they intersect down the road a ways? The maps presented can help, but it is up to me to ‘put myself on the map’.

There have been so many new ways to communicate and share ideas introduced throughout this course. Some of the ones that I have experimented with are posted here. My hope is to use some of these within my work as a teacher and leader.

Wordle:   Wordle for Psychology of Educational Technology

Prezi:  Presentation for DLG 9 The Economics of Educational Technology

Webspiration: used to plan Outline of Essay

Scrapblog: response to Module 11 – Spirituality of Educational Technology 

The module on the  Spirituality of Educational Technology will challenged us to examine our beliefs, in general and in specifics in relation to technology. Our first task was to share our beliefs. 

Here is my first ever Scrapblog creation. I have had some challenges to share this creation so I will also share each page here. There will be no music or transitions for these pages, as there is on the Scrapblog site.

DLG – discussion, leadership, group….. 

I have recently completed my work with leading a module discussion relating to the Economics of Educational Technology. This module leadership was done with a group of diverse educators from many parts of the world. Our challenge was to work together to build a discussion on this topic and find resources, questions, links etc. to keep the discussion moving throughout the week of this module. The experience was a positive one since the group really worked well together. We each brought our interests, passions and perspectives to the work. We created a wiki to capture the key ideas and information. We drafted and re-drafted many questions and discussion points. Together we became DLG-9. At the end of the week, I was quite pleased with the results of the discussion threads and content that the work was done.  

Here is the culminating task that I created as part of this week’s work. It was a response to “The economics of educational technology is like …… because …..” My response is in podcast format as well as a written post.