When I enrolled for this course I, had a fair idea that this is a course that will guide me to increase my knowledge to be used in my profile. As now in my life growth cycle I am at a stage where every knowledge I gain is planned and channelized to what my future profession will be. And I am yet to reach a stage to read random library full of books and articles to enhance my knowledge. But for now my goal is a good profession. Now I will try to take you through the journey of the first term (February 2013 to April 2013) of my course name Digital Learning Technologies, from which you can make a small idea of what this course is all about.
My first idea was that this course will teach me to use advanced skills, and knowledge of use of various multimedia tools. These can be used for teaching or developing your own knowledge base. But to be true I learnt much more. May be because of the design and implementation of this course or excellent teaching skills of my professor. For now we will concentrate in syllabus wise what I learnt from this course, and what I liked about it.
We started of with learning to use blogs, micro-blogs and what is 21st century teaching is all about, and how digital learning technologies have been embedded in our daily lives. We also saw what were the challenges it faced in today's world. That made me see the technology that I saw and used form the other side of the window. We went in depth about the various DLT's used in organisations and how o use social networking as learning tool. I had been using social media but never used it as a tool. The best thing came the later was I learnt what PLN was. It was like my plans for the future got a structure to stand on. I was now preparing to embrace technologies to enhance my learning and professional network. That was a major turning point in my career planning. After all these years of education I had never thought about the pedagogic implementation. I realised that NLP and VAKOG are the need of the future. We learnt about the four pedagogy, and made me think of all the education I had done through that spectrum.
We learnt all about the various instructional design models, and had our first play with EIT Online (Moodle). We made a model in group within 1 hour using common Google doc. And that started the creativity end in my brain. I started to plan my final assignment of creating a online course, from there. The knowledge of using connected media and detailed use of wiki gave platform to use wiki as tool. We also researched various cloud tools and mobile learning techniques and how it can be used.
This was just the brief what what all I learnt in just 3 months. The best parts of this course was Adobe connect providing live streaming of the classroom sessions at comfort of your home or anyplace in the world. Then the method of submitting your assessments using blogs and cloud tools like Google sites was unique.
They opened me to an idea of sharing my work with the
world and receiving feedback from them. It was scary at the start but gradually developed a thought in me that the your knowledge can also be shared with your world. The effort my professor puts in maintaining his course online open and available to one and all in the world was outstanding. It portrayed a amazing ideology of sharing his work that he created with such hard-work.
For me this kind of educational delivery was new and was a amazing journey of change of ideologies. And will cherish every thing I learnt from this course. The only suggestion I wanted to give in the start of this course almost was inculcated. That was the presentation of assessments.
One thing I would like to add is that apart from Adobe connect we also can use a back technology, just in case Adobe Connect is down.
I will remember Associate Professor M Veehart all my life for his unique thought of imparting and sharing his wide knowledge. The effort you put is herculean and many teachers and even your peers can learn from that. If in future such efforts are made common education for all will not be far fetched dream.
A sincere thanks to you.
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