Lesson 1 - Personal Learning Goal

Lesson 1 Prompt

Considering the online learning self-assessment you took this week, and thinking about your reasons for taking this course, what is your highest priority learning goal for this course? What are some specific skills, strategies or tools you are hoping to learn more about?

One of my highest priorities or goals for this course is to develop a system or process to organize the abundance of resources, in a meaningful way, and to use this knowledge to help others design and develop online learning opportunities for students.

I recently wrote a Blog post for TBLOGICAL titled “Digital Deprivation” . In it my goal was to contrast the real “digital” world students live in outside of school vs the very confined and limited access to information students experience while at school. In the post I described an activity that a colleague and I did with our Board of Education Members and Senior Cabinet. We broke them into two groups and gave them twenty minutes to prepare a ten minute presentation on the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. One group had access to the state approved textbook (which is most likely the same resource as 90% of the 9th grade students in the state) and the second group were provided with iPads to use in their research. While the textbook had less than a page of information (facts) the group with the iPads were discovering actual video footage of Truman’s speech and George C. Marshall touring war torn Europe. One member of the group found an article from the Europeans point of view on the Marshall Plan. And these were adults who had never used an iPad prior to the activity. You can read the complete post here: Digital Deprivation

One of the items discussed in the Online learning readiness survey dealt with the issue of organization. With the wealth of information and resources readily available this is one area that I find overwhelming at times and I believe is one of the main deterrents for teachers to embrace the change. This, coupled with lack of knowledge, skills and strategies to take advantage of these resources is what keeps many teachers from incorporating blended learning opportunities into their classroom.

By completing the Leading Edge Certification I hope to reflect, further develop, organize, and define my own knowledge of online/blended learning and in turn help others to do the same. The final result being schools providing students with a much broader experience than the very defined textbook driven experience currently in place today.