For my final EME5050 course posting, I have chosen to share my Learning Summary with my fellow classmates. I thoroughly enjoyed "meeting" you all this year. I feel through blog interaction that I've gotten to know many of you, through your experiences, personally. I hope to "see" you around as my graduate school journey continues.-- AD
At the onset of this course I
looked at the syllabus and quickly became overwhelmed. After diligently reading
through module and listening to the week 0 message, I followed a note from Dr.
K and took a moment to, “just breathe.” During the first few weeks the course
work seemed overwhelming. Even with my technology trainer background, I was
intimidated about creating so many social media accounts. I’m constantly
worrying about my online presence, because as an educator I want to avoid any
chance of someone misinterpreting posts as unbecoming conduct. This course
showed me that social media should not be feared. It is in fact a powerful to
that can be utilized to communicate with students, collaborate with other
educators, and engage in meaningful research. Using social tools such as
Twitter, LinkedIn, and Blogger has allowed for me to build my communication
skills and increase my pedagogical credibility.
As the course rolled on I found
myself to beginning to integrate NET Standards into my everyday lesson designs.
Slowly but surely, I began to step out of my technology comfort zone, and
became a better educator for it. For example, the biggest test of my skills
came when building an entire WikiSpace. Though I admit to having previous
experience in e-learning course storyboard designing, I never even considered
that these skills could be translated into site design. Using existing skills
to translate into new technology use allowed me to begin to truly apply course
teaching to my everyday teaching life. In stretching myself I gained new and
became more proficient in instructional design, and overall a better educator.
