Essay on Expectations

Introduction

I am planning to focus on learning how to improve my use of technology. Another goal is to enhance my skills in providing interactive activities and resources to form online learning communities.

Improving Use of Technology

While I am comfortable with some types of technology, I am unsure of my skills in others. I find learning new technology threatening. Because of my fears, I tend to do things too speedily. I guess this is to "get the learning assignment over with". I hope to get comfortable with being an online facilitator, which is a new experience for me, especially using the live tools. Although I am uncomfortable in executing tech tools, I find that once I learn them and incorporate them into my assigned online classes, they work out well. This certainly increases my confidence in facilitating online classes. For example, for some reason, I find it difficult to communicate live urls-especially for my blog. Something in the url is always missing. This happens even when I copy and paste from the site. This has taught me the importance of always checking my urls for resources used in class to make sure they are "live" for student access.

Forming Online Communities

During the last class, I was introduced to the term "online learning communities". This was a new experience for me. It didn't really dawn on me that forming these communities is an important part of providing interactive learning, until the course was almost over. The experience of communicating using WIKIs and/or Google Docs demonstrated a different way of communicating for one who is not involved, and does not intend to be involved with social net working. I must admit that our group worked well and so did the technology.

An important part of forming communities is selecting interactive activities and the technology to deliver them. I began to explore various resources in the last class. I was especially interested in videos that would enhance student learning. While I did have some problems with Youtube videos, I learned a lot and have incorporated them into my current web-enhanced class. I want to learn more about how to find appropriate learning resources for my students-and myself.

I see my experience with online learning classes as a journey. There will be some bumps in the road. I have confidence that my group and other support people will help me continue on.