Week 7 Reflection

Greetings,

From the beginning of this course there was a clear emphasis on collaboration. The most exciting aspect of the online learning experience is this seemingly infinite opportunity to engage with new ideas and perspectives. With quite a broad learning structure students were enabled to explore different content and direct their own learning. This both allowed individuals to cater to their interests as well as expand their horizons. I would think of it as a group foraging experience as students were able to go off on different tangents, collect information and report back each week on their blogs. The topics were straightforward but the avenues that individuals explored were vast. This experience created a pool of knowledge that was filled with alternative perspectives. It also gave students the means of expressing their ideas through different forms of media like images, text, videos and interactive websites.

 With the course wiki, it was very easy to access the blogs of each student in the course. By using blogging and wiki technology it was possible to collaborate on a deeper level with student work. The technology allowed for individuals to comment and critique ideas in a safe environment dedicated to learning. This allowed for students to truly engage with content and delve deeper into the ideas they contributed. In terms of commenting I believe I may have refrained more than others as I enjoyed the ability to watch ideas organically grow, develop and change through the process of this course. The empowering thing was that I always had the opportunity comment and respond to content at whim.  It was interesting week to week noticing students take structures like the SAMR model and continually add depth and relevance to its value in creating effective resources. This was a great way to incorporate new perspectives an paradigms that I may have overlooked into my own work. This was a wonderful experience as there were very few limitations on my ability to contact and collaborate with students. If I desired clarification or discussion it was at my finger tips and never limited by location.

A particularly useful activity at the beginning of the course was the ‘De bonno’s thinking hats’ activity as it set the tone for students to voice their opinion, think from different perspectives and collaborate with others. This tone continued through the length of the course. Discussions were able to overlap from blogs/ wikis, to student’s social media and into the physical classroom. I feel that this added a new level of depth to the classroom experience as learning was taking place outside of a physical space and was not limited by scheduling. I feel that overall the combination of an online and classroom environment enriched the learning and collaboration potential of this course. It further demonstrates the imperative of incorporating these technologies in a contemporary classroom.