Midterm Self-Reflection

by Lee Putnam

The act of introspection is most difficult for me.  When I engage in the act, I am often dissatisfied with the results.  It has been said that oft times we can be our own worst critics.  I find that to be so very true.  Having said this, what follows are reflections on my work for the first half of this class.

The objective of this course, as stated in the syllabus, is to introduce “in-service teachers to blogs, wikis, and other read-write Internet services that allow students to be creators of digital media.”  Allow me to qualify my perspective by stating that I am not an “in-service teacher”, in fact I am not a teacher at all.  That fact will impact my perspective regarding the material presented in the course.  Where it is clear to me that my lack of teaching experience has had an impact I will endeavor to point that out.

 

Our world is rapidly changing, in particular the manner in which this generation socially interacts, obtains their news, does research, and even their primary means of learning is becoming ever increasingly dependent on electronic connectivity with others either right next door or even across the world.  That change in their behavior mandates that our generation learns technological literacy skills that will allow us to remain connected with them.  Never before has the term generation gap taken on such a profoundly challenging meaning.

 

The Blog

 

The first step in building our technological literacy skill set was to begin to blog.  The ability to blog provides us with a very fundamental freedom.  By using a blog, one can present one’s opinion to either a select group or to quite literally the world.  When you think about that, using a blog provides a person with a great deal of power; power that is very similar to the power of the press, on what can become a global scale.

 

For this class we engaged in three distinct blogs; a set of intra-class blogs using Moodle, a personal technologies blog, and a class blog used in a holistic way.  The intra-class blog was used to discuss our progress, questions, concerns, and at times frustrations with our fellow students and with Dr. Rivera.  Our personal technologies blog was intended to give us an opportunity to present written work that demonstrated what we gained from our investigation of the educational relevance of the technologies that we were learning about.  The class blog was apparently intended to be a forum in which we were to bear our souls.  I have avoided the class blog because of this, and I have co-opted its use by posting about technologies that I was interested in and thought others might find useful.

 

Have I learned here?  Well, I have a bit.  I had already been blogging, and I had my own technologies blog that I have continued to post to for this class.  When I look at that blog, I am more satisfied with what I have published there this year than what I published last fall.  Using that perspective as a measure I would say that I have grown.

 

Learning Management Systems

The LMS assignment has been a point of frustration for me.  I believe that my lack of teaching experience is a significant contributor to that frustration.  While the tools are not very complicated, I cannot relate to them at all.  When I work in an LMS I feel as if I am just going through the motions of plugging in information with no vision of what the end product should look like.

For this process I have investigated a half a dozen systems (eGrade, Rcampus, Moodle, CourseSites, BrainHoney, Edmodo).  I found myself playing with one, finding that I wanted it to be able to do a particular additional task, not being able to get it to do that task, and then moving on in hopes that the next LMS would do all the tasks that I wanted it to do.  Keep in mind that I was doing this with no vision of what the final product should look like.  The result was frustration and a very superficial understanding of the components and functionality of each LMS.

Internet Tools

Investigating internet based education technologies has been the most interesting assignment of this course.  Throughout the investigation I have found amateurish work, hype, commercialism, and material that is absolutely priceless.  Kahn Academy, TedTalks, YouTube, TedEd, LiveBinders, GoogleDrive, Dropbox, and Apache OpenOffice are just a few of the gems that I have learned about. 

In my opinion this entire course should be about finding those technology gems that are out there to be used for education.  The very nature of the internet is innovation and change.  Change that is so rapid, that we find that it is terribly difficult to keep up with the pace of that change.

Perhaps Dr. Rivera has a hidden agenda with regard to this assignment.  Perhaps she hopes that we will discover the thrill of the hunt and become hooked; that when this class is over we will forever have a desire to find that new gem and then blog about it, sharing what we are learning for perpetuity.

International Reading Association Newsletter

Internet research is just plain fun, especially when you are looking for material that holds your interest.  I am interested in contributing to the effort to improve adult literacy.  Finding resources that help us to understand and address the problem of illiteracy clearly fits neatly into my area of interest.

With regard to this assignment, I believe that I have met the expectations of the task.  I have discovered and have written summaries for several sites that appear to hold significant knowledge related to literacy.  The sites are diverse, either being U.S. centric or they have an international perspective.

My Overall Performance

I suppose this is where Dr. Rivera expects our introspection to quantify just how well we have met course expectations.  This is also the area that I dread.  No one knows better than I do where I have fallen short of my expected performance, where I could have expended more effort and where I could have performed better than I have.  I believe that is the case for all of us.

My professional attitude, disposition, behavior, commitment and enthusiasm have been fair.  I have found myself frustrated by the LMS rather than just pushing through the problems that I experienced. My attendance has not been consistent, finding it difficult to adequately allot my time between fiercely competing aspects of my life.  I believe however that I have adequately participated with regard to the IRA Newsletter and the Personal Technology blog.

The submission of my work has not been and remains untimely.  For that I apologies because I know that it imposes upon and impacts others, especially Dr. Rivera.

For the work that I have submitted, I believe that I am meeting course standards.

I am open to criticism of and challenges to the work that I have done; but I have not received any feedback, other than that from Dr. Rivera, on the work that I have presented.  Is there anybody out there?