Your final post for this course is an opportunity to reflect on your learning journey through the course and to look ahead as you integrate your new knowledge into your teaching practice.
You may choose to complete this post in one of a variety of ways. You may record and post a video, an audio podcast, a screencast, an annotated presentation, an infographic, sketchnotes, or a regular, text-based blog post.
Topics to cover in your final post include, but are not limited to:
- What are the most important lessons you gathered from the course?
- How has your thinking changed as a result of completing the course?
- In what ways did the platform (WordPress) influence your interaction with the content and other people and what you learned?
- What learning strategies were most effective for you? Why?
In addition to reflecting on your work, please include 2-3 ideas that you would like to implement in your own practice and how you might go about doing so.
I would say that one of the most important lessons I gathered from the course is that this form of learning for me was not actually very effective. I found it challenging to get through this much information and actually comprehend it in the time that is suggested. It makes me realize that everyone’s learning styles are very different and that one style or approach will not work for all, thus the importance of using variety when teaching.
My thinking has changed in some ways as it made me realize that teaching through distance is a lot different than face to face even though I already know this. I have taught online and had great evaluations and felt quite competent however, going through these 3 courses actually complicated things more for me and the result has left me feeling a bit unease.
I use to maintain a 25 page professional website for my counselling practice and used wordpress and had a blog on the site. I discovered years ago through this process that although I enjoyed using it and found it to be quite user friendly, I was also aware that my limited knowledge made for making mistakes quite easily and not knowing how to fix them. I also found that I wasn’t very good at keeping up with blog posts so it works for some, not for all.
I think the biggest thing I will take away and hopefully incorporate into my teaching practice is going to be creating a strong social presence with my students that also encourages them to create a strong social presence. I really loved the comment about it not being a “teacher presence” but rather a “teaching presence”. This reflects that learning is not falling on the shoulders of only the teacher but rather others in the course and also utilizing the great world wide web as a resource.