Where Am I Now?
Here I am, 34 years into my career as an educator, taking a Post-graduate program in an Educational field! Most people ask me if I am planning my retirement and look at me somewhat oddly when I tell them that I am going back to school and in no way ready for retirement. Now, at the end of the first class in the OLTD program, I have to say that I feel quite invigorated by the experience. As a long-time administrator, I have been familiar with a number of key learning theories and have prided myself as trying to incorporate cutting edge teaching and learning into my school. OLTD 501 has certainly opened my eyes to even greater possibilities. I had not encountered Steven Downes and Connectivism before, nor known that experiential learning is actually described as a learning theory (Kolb). In my current task of building a virtual school, I have had to learn about different versions of blended learning. This course has helped me to articulate why students working totally independently will not be as successful as those that have an opportunity to work both asynchronously through an LMS and also synchronously with a teacher and peers through a program like Blackboard. I now have the initial research and vocabulary to clearly state the conditions that I would like to see my fledgling virtual school operate under. Our delivery model that uses these methods has been heavily influenced by the research, conversations, and learnings I have been exposed to in OLTD 501. I am looking forward to a deeper understanding of online instructional design as I move through the rest of the program.
Here I am, 34 years into my career as an educator, taking a Post-graduate program in an Educational field! Most people ask me if I am planning my retirement and look at me somewhat oddly when I tell them that I am going back to school and in no way ready for retirement. Now, at the end of the first class in the OLTD program, I have to say that I feel quite invigorated by the experience. As a long-time administrator, I have been familiar with a number of key learning theories and have prided myself as trying to incorporate cutting edge teaching and learning into my school. OLTD 501 has certainly opened my eyes to even greater possibilities. I had not encountered Steven Downes and Connectivism before, nor known that experiential learning is actually described as a learning theory (Kolb). In my current task of building a virtual school, I have had to learn about different versions of blended learning. This course has helped me to articulate why students working totally independently will not be as successful as those that have an opportunity to work both asynchronously through an LMS and also synchronously with a teacher and peers through a program like Blackboard. I now have the initial research and vocabulary to clearly state the conditions that I would like to see my fledgling virtual school operate under. Our delivery model that uses these methods has been heavily influenced by the research, conversations, and learnings I have been exposed to in OLTD 501. I am looking forward to a deeper understanding of online instructional design as I move through the rest of the program.