I can’t believe the year is already over. This has been one of the busiest and fastest of my life. Between the compressed schedule due to the strike, my new responsibilities as Staff Committee Chair and Union Rep, the crazy amount of Pro-growth I signed up for (Building Your Leadership Capacity, Creating a Thinking Classroom and Democracy Bootcamp) and my OLTD coursework, I have learned more this year than I have in the past five years combined. I don’t think there is anyone who is looking forward to summer more than I am. I am going to relax a little and spend some time getting to know my wife and children again.
Having said that- there is still one more bit of business that I have to fulfill and that is providing a summary of my learning in OLTD 505. It is a simple video, but after writing papers for most of the other courses in the OLTD program this was a pleasant change.
There were a couple of things that I failed to mention when making the video- mostly because I didn’t realize them until I started looking at other people’s summaries of their learning. One element that stands out upon reflection was the importance of weekly blog posts. I actually quite enjoy writing and blogging is an ideal form for me because it’s informal enough that I don’t get hung up on making everything perfcet J. I’m going to continue to blog throughout the summer about my vacation and my reading and I will tweet these posts out to the interweb. I realize that one thing I have to work on is making my blogs more interactive through incorporating videos, links and by posing questions- if I want responses I will have to solicit them which is something I haven’t been very good at thus far.
The other thing that I neglected to mention in the video is something that came up in a few other summaries of learning and that is the element of collaboration that has been a major component in all of our OLTD courses. I never expected that learning online would be as social as it has been. It’s been a real eye-opener for me and it’s only now that I really start to appreciate what was described in the COI theory we were learning about back in the fall. I hope we can continue this through the summer with the OLTD Shared Learning community.
If we don’t cross paths again for a while, enjoy your summer. Make sure you really take a break- it’s important. I look forward to seeing you all again in September.
Derek
Having said that- there is still one more bit of business that I have to fulfill and that is providing a summary of my learning in OLTD 505. It is a simple video, but after writing papers for most of the other courses in the OLTD program this was a pleasant change.
There were a couple of things that I failed to mention when making the video- mostly because I didn’t realize them until I started looking at other people’s summaries of their learning. One element that stands out upon reflection was the importance of weekly blog posts. I actually quite enjoy writing and blogging is an ideal form for me because it’s informal enough that I don’t get hung up on making everything perfcet J. I’m going to continue to blog throughout the summer about my vacation and my reading and I will tweet these posts out to the interweb. I realize that one thing I have to work on is making my blogs more interactive through incorporating videos, links and by posing questions- if I want responses I will have to solicit them which is something I haven’t been very good at thus far.
The other thing that I neglected to mention in the video is something that came up in a few other summaries of learning and that is the element of collaboration that has been a major component in all of our OLTD courses. I never expected that learning online would be as social as it has been. It’s been a real eye-opener for me and it’s only now that I really start to appreciate what was described in the COI theory we were learning about back in the fall. I hope we can continue this through the summer with the OLTD Shared Learning community.
If we don’t cross paths again for a while, enjoy your summer. Make sure you really take a break- it’s important. I look forward to seeing you all again in September.
Derek