In my flight plan, I included both long-term and short-term goals and a few comments on on the tools that would be required to meet them. Over the long term, it was, and still is, my goal to bolster my credentials toward becoming a district specialist, consultant, and/or Ph. D. student. In the short term, I planned to improve my classroom practise by strategically implementing technology as part of a shift toward project based learning. I also intended to increase my use of technology for communication.
Just today I read a Facebook post that reminded of my progress toward my long-term goals. Educational leader Vicky A Davis shared the Henry Ford quote, “You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.” I realized that I am building a reputation, but I am nowhere near where I eventually want to be. The work I am doing in the short-term; however, is steadily continuing me on my way.
The eLearning toolkit was not a useful resource in my progression toward my goals. As someone who is comfortable with much of the technology presented and reasonably competent in its use, I found little need for it, or searched other resources for more specific answers to questions and challenges I had. Furthermore, I think from an educational, theoretical perspective first, and was familiar with both the SECTIONS framework (Bates & Poole, 2003) and Anderson’s Theory of Online Learning (Anderson, 2008) coming into this course. Thus I was able to come to many of my own conclusions about the technology without referring to eLearning toolkit, although I may have missed an opportunity to apply myself and learning within the toolkit and make a contribution or two.
The greatest value I am taking away from this course is its demand to work hands-on, so-to-speak, with the technological tools. Coming from a theory background, it’s one thing to suggest how a technological tool might best be implemented, leveraging affordances and mitigating constraints, and all too often critiquing the poorly implemented technology. It is quite another to go ahead and apply the theory to complete tasks using said technology. Especially within the Moodle assignments and the digital story assignment, I feel that I learned a lot more than the final products necessarily showed. In completing them there were a number of decisions and reflections made as well as challenges overcome that made me aware of the possibility to do things differently and potentially more effectively next time. These processes were not necessarily visible in the product, but could be shown in reflections or conversations about the assignments. Unfortunately, the overwhelming demands of the course readings prevented me from having the time to write on my blog about the reflections I was making in my head. Similar to the assignments, but less directly applied, the case studies of this course exposed me to a variety of situations in which I could apply my knowledge to settings that were distinctly different from what I would experience in my daily work, but within the scope of where I may one day consult. I found this valuable in stretching the horizons of my practise and reflections.
The greatest challenge I found with the course was volume of reading required, and its occasional lack of application to what was expected in the units. One of the most notable examples was the lack of readings in Module 2 that provided the information required to make an informed decision about cost for the implementation of a Moodle LMS, though it was a criterion assessed for evaluation of the assignment (Perkins and Pfaffman, 2006; Panettieri, 2007). Returning to the amount of readings required, they may or may not have been appropriate to a masters level course, but I found it difficult to imagine a full-time student taking four or five courses such as this and having enough hours in the day to complete it all. Regardless of that, the readings were my most significant challenge in the course and made it difficult to post in the forum in the early part of the week. I made it a personal policy not to read the forums before completing the readings and gathering my thoughts, but sometimes when I was ready to post, there was already a conversation going much along the lines of my thoughts. While I could often add to the conversation, there were occasions when there was simply nothing significant left for me to say, and I was left feeling that I missed out, and may be penalized academically for not having the time in my busy personal and professional life that some others do.
Moving forward, I am looking forward to focussing on smaller scale technology implementation. Much of the work I have done thus far has focussed on the value and appropriateness of technological devices in K-12 education such as iPads, iPods, laptops and SMARTBoards, and less so on LMSs, blogs, wikis, folksonomies and other web 2.0 tools. This has already begun with the creation and implementation of: a class website that includes a blog for parent communication and pages of content and resources for students; student blogs where they are working toward a quad-blogging project of social constructivism and collaboration; student social bookmarking accounts to collect, share, and tag content; and a professional learning group wiki for the curation of tools and content that we find valuable in our collaborative practise. Ultimately, I expect that continued and effective use of these tools, and a few others, will lead me toward new and promising tools, like Vuvox which I had not heard of prior to this course but will be using with a colleague at an upcoming committee presentation, as they become relevant to what I am doing and learning.
References:
Anderson, T. (2008).Towards a Theory of Online Learning. In: T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Accessed online 3 March 2009http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf
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.
Panettieri, J. (2007). Addition by subtraction. University Business, August, 58-62. Accessed online 11 March 2009.http://www.universitybusiness.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=845
Perkins, M. & Pfaffman, J. (2006). Using a Course Management System to Improve Classroom Communication. Science Teacher, 73(7), 33-37.