Where does this leave me in terms of how I have grown. Well the answer for this is more personal. Throughout this course I have developed an appreciation that my professional knowledge is valid and useful for some. Therefore, I must do my best to share more of my own thoughts and ideas. Be a creator and not a lurker.
I also learned, that sometimes I am my own worst critic. Several times I've made comments about how something isn't perfect and things I wanted to tweak only to have classmates love the work that I did. I don't expect my co-workers or students to be perfect, why should I place this expectation upon myself (still do but getting better).
My teaching practice when I work with adults will probably be the area that is most impacted. I am moving to a new school which as of right now will most likely be a virtual experience. Going through the process of developing a mini-curricular unit online, helped me to think about how I can provide training and support to teachers in the new school.
There were 2 challenges that I had issues with. The first is that being an elementary tech integrator means that my students would not be able to use most of what I created independently (user age is ofter 13 or 16, or 18). Thus I decided to focus my unit on adults as teacher training is a big aspect of my job.
The second was in the delivery method. I didn't want to create a course in a whole new learning platform that teachers would have to learn. Thus I stuck to the Bulb, Google Sites, and Zoom as these are the platforms currently in use or will be in use in the near future. However, I decided to toss in a few additional tools (not the main platforms) to get teachers thinking more about tech and social learning (ex. YouTube, Diigo).
For students taking this course in the future I would suggest:
- Spending time to find out what social networks work best for you
- Develop a good strategy for monitoring your social networks (Hootsuite)
As for my blog performance during the course. I would personally say that I've done what was necessary but didn't spend the time to add multimedia to my posts to make it more engaging. This is something that I need to work on.
Overall I enjoyed the course and am happy that I took. Now to continue contributing to the global pool of knowledge.