blog mm

It’s only at the end of learning that we begin to learn again.  Resetting the frames of reference, like restting the points of navigation, when you reach one destination – time to reset the compass.  I feel I now know enough to learn more. What an extraordinary course!  The only one which truly didn’t feel like doing a course! 

Increasing confidence in using my online voice – be the same as you are off line

Wishing there was someone I could sit with and go over the course and technology with rather than communicating online exclusively – I’m sure I could learn a whole lot with sitting next to some one with a computer – wondering if I can ask someone to do that?  Who’s got time?? Not me!

Checking out and then checking back in – same initial sense of being overwhelmed with the amount of information and trails to follow – if you put the thing down for a couple of weeks it seems the world has moved on!

Joining our outside learning communities – so hard to find one I wanted to join, reminded me of all the reasons I didn’t join bulletin boards, Facebook, Myspace etc – who wants to hear all that crap.  Prefer to remain with the emt1 learning community on the Ning for the assignment as I felt far more engaged and curious about the other people in the community

Meeting up again for group work – reminded me of what’s good about e-learning and the desirability of face to face meeting.  Wish we could have had a few more meetings earlier on to set directions and thrash out what we wanted.  A lot of time is spent on min-catch up conversations and getting to know you stuff in between re-writing the wiki – important irrelevant stuff (that’s how I draft documents too”. I prefer …Can’t stand .. etc a hundred conversations you’d have with work colleagues etc condensed into the two hours while we do our project collaboratively,  frustrating as we have limited time to meet and don’t want to dampen down the many mini connections but all concerned to get as much done as possible.”)

Communities of practice I & II – group as a whole and task group – different dynamics, different outcomes for different groups – challenged and extended my learning, bricolage of learning

Struggling with old paradigms of standards for teaching/learning in professions (eg teaching lawyers – do we need to ensure minimum requirements v self directed learning (can we allow people to learn what they want to learn and forget the rest? Or is this a question for another course

Watching some of the other seminal videos on people’s blogs – the cat!  Took some time to click on and watch the whole thing – aha!  Anne’s video link on the future of learning – the vast number of Chinese students!  (particularly after last years teaching At Syd Uni where 9/10 of my Masters students were from Mainland china!

Still concerned with the idea of how do we know people have learned and are people being left behind?  Eg some people have never surfaced on the Ning let alone the blogs – where have they gone, how could we have connected to ensure they came along.  Esp since they have such diverse backgrounds and learning needs.  We can all learn so much just from tapping into each other’s experience and expertise.  Frustrated that we don’t hear from some of the other voices

Realisation that this course embodied all the kinds of learning that I had been struggling to find at UTS – started answering the questions such as how do you teach a skill,  self directed learning, group or social learning, learning based on what you want to or need to learn as opposed to what the teacher wasn’t to teach (all principles which I have followed in my teaching/training and had yet to experience in the distance course at UTS, as opposed to simply reading about it

Getting to know my fellow students not f2f (which would have been slower and different experience but through their blogs and writings – helped to get to know them differently than in a class, allowed the ‘noisier’ ones to speak when ever they wanted and the quiet ones to chip in when they could’

Shared frustrations, learning from each others development, learning from seeing other blogs and Ning pages develop and postings with either specific tips or eg

Seeing Angus’s hand man animation – revolutionized my understanding of different ways of learning (let go of text!) and how today’s learner can and will learn through other mediums – visual is everything! Text is the dinosaur – but hard to let go.

Surprised at how absorbing and time consuming the course was and could be.  Could spend hours chasing rabbits down holes, realised needed to set structure and time aside for learning as subject took up all time available and other subject languished (wanted to spend th time rather than doing set tasks

Realised that all the other learning I had done had relevance to this course and it could help me change the way I learn and help others to learn

Realised the difference between distance education and e-learning.

• Reading everyone else online – now I am learning – finally accepting it’s a different and equally valuable (if not more so) way to learn

• Finding my own voice

• AH Ha moments include realizing I had come across John Sleighs web site before (2 years ago when researching training packages for a client)

• Getting used to bossy boots who monopolise chats and postings – in fact, without them it would be boring and static course.  Hoping to hear from others (Why hasn’t Angus for example contributed when he had a lot to contribute in the f2f, (is this course just a tick a box for him because he is already on top of the technology, will we ever hear from some of the others who seemed overwhelmed by the technology  Later thankful for bossy boots who keep it alive and enegerised

First face to face workshop – intimidating and exciting, a look around the room was both concerning (is there anyone like me) and encouraging ( I think I can do this, plenty of others in same boat or worse off) and YES this is exactly the course I want and the kind of teacher I’m looking for.

Realisation that this course was unlike any other course I had done and was a combination of my diverse skills

Materials go on line and I am dubious that this will be the course for me.  Don’t want experience of last semester and having done another subject (research perspectives which was a ton of reading of little relevance to me and zero interaction with other students, and only interaction from teacher was a grade for my work.)

Setting up the technology – frustrations and satisfaction at having to work it through for ourselves (ABB had confidence in us that we would learn for ourselves) and learn from each other

Reflections on Learning

Can’t wait to start course, frustrated at lack of materials on line for eg reading.  I have heaps of time on my hands and want to get a head start on the reading as I know it backs up quickly and loads of work and personal obligations are on the horizon.  This is my second (non-consecutive) semester (last semester  I dropped out due to work commitments and frustration at lecturer’s attitude to questions about materials and   mind-numbingly obtuse reading guide and course outline for different, compulsory subject)

Emails  to lecturer (ABB) are returned promptly and pleasantly surprised at rapid and friendly response. But a frustrated that I can’t get started on readings!

Materials go on line and I am dubious that this will be the course for me.  Don’t want experience of last semester and having done another subject (research perspectives which was a ton of reading of little relevance to me and zero interaction with other students, and only interaction from teacher was a grade for my work.)

See Assessment Task 1.1 page

Having finally posted my first task, I am excited to start the next phase which is the actual participation in the learning community.