Thursday, June 2, 2011

Two thumbs up



Creating this blog has not been a wholly positive experience. In the beginning, it was a task I had to do to because I was being graded, a little boring as I wasn't always all too adventurous with technology, time-consuming and also confronting. Blogging wasn't a new experience for me and was one I actually used to take pleasure in but blogging about life and things that inspired or happened to me was very much different to blogging for the sake of passing a course and appearing knowledgeable about the digital world. In the midst of attending university three days a week, working for two and completing numerous assignments during the weekend, blogging wasn't something that interested me. As with many things, when you haven't meddled with it in awhile, it takes you awhile to figure out how to use it again and for some reason, it took quite a lot of long and frustrating hours to make my blog into a place I was happy to visit.

You will be glad to know I no longer view blogging with the same passion as I did 12 weeks ago.

In many ways, I've grown attached to this experience of settling down with a hot tea, switiching on my laptop, pulling out my notes and putting all my thoughts down in digital reality. And ultimately, blogging has made me a reflective learner. Within this course, I have been introduced to many different techonological tools; some that I have heard of in the past and some new to me but 90 percent of which I have chosen to avoid attempting. I believe in order to write about something, we need to either be knowledgeable about it or have experienced it. As I'm clearly not technologically savvy, I've gone down the road of experience. Blogging has therefore given me a reason to pull my socks up, stop whinging and start playing with the 'toys' on the Web. To take it one step further, the process of writing about these experiences has shaped me into a learner that not only experiences but is also reflective upon her experience.

Looking back, I found it difficult to blog in the beginning as I didn't what direction I wanted to take this blog. Seeing as this blog was one that was going to be for university purposes and perhaps for my professional portfolio one day, I didn't feel like I could blog as me but rather I needed to be more formal in my blogging style. It took me awhile and the exposure to some of my peers' blogs to realise that it was more important for me to blog as an indidvidual with my personality rather than attempt to blog with someonelse' voice. Once I established that, deciding what to blog was quicker and the process more fluid.

All in all, this course has opened my eyes to the many benefits the Web can bring to the classroom and I hope to re-create and incorporate these tools into my classroom teaching and learning experiences. I've just found out that I'll be getting Year two students for my ATP and I've been thinking of various ways the use of modern technology can enhance the experience. Yes, the children may be young and lack some of the skills and literacy knowledge but I don't believe that I should let that stop me. I'm truly excited at the idea of becoming a socially networked classroom.

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