Week 2 Summative Blog
1. Where you were when you started?
A teacher friend highly recommended this course to me. She found the course was a great source for online applications and software for teaching and told me to take the course if got the chance. What we did in the first few days was something I didn’t expect. I wasn’t sure of what to make of the course. I was overwhelmed. I had exceeded my breaking point and reached an ‘information overload’. I was being pushed out of my comfort zone, and I didn’t like it. I had moments were I thought about dropping this course, but I glad I didn’t.
2. Where you are now?
I’m feeling more confident. I know what to expect in class and have learned to cope with the ‘information smog’. It also helps to know that I wasn’t alone in my feelings of anxiety about our class; everyone else was feeling the same too. That brings me to my feelings of being more connected with the teaching community. It’s hard building relationships with other teachers as a TOC. With this course, I’m slowly making personal connections and building my own learning group. It’s been a great experience sharing with each other. There’s a developing sense of camaraderie and fellowship. It’s a great feeling. We’re in this together!
3. Where you see yourself going?
I hope I can continue this motivation and momentum of change well after this course is over.
I want to continue to challenge my pedagogical practices, pushing myself to grow as a teacher.
I hope to maintain and keep the personal and professional connections I’ve made.
1. Information Smog (week 1): struggling and coping with the class (understanding concepts, expectations, assignments)
2. Making Connections (week 2-3): putting theories into practice and applying ideas to real life situations
3. Final project: a culmination of our learning
Leaving our comfort zones is difficult work. Sometimes there is no easy way to break the habits of thought and practice that have become the ‘normal’ way of doing things. There are many teachers who are finding their classrooms inundated with digital technology, or the learning cultures associated with the use of digital technology and they do not know how to make meaning of these incursions. We can’t simply throw a blanket over the technology and pretend it doesn’t exist. On the other hand, it is very hard work to process new information. We can often weather change better when we feel we have others who are traveling with us. You have done an awesome job of making adjustments to new ways of understanding teaching, learning, digital technologies, and educational systems.