Lesson 6 Blog

This lesson has opened up our eyes quite a bit regarding Network Learning Environments since we have been creating our units. I think one of the really positive things for us is that in designing these networks we have been able to build off of or learn from the interactions that we have had as a group to incorporate ideas and strategies into our own environments.

One of the interesting things I have discovered with this particular group in this particular semester was how most of our communication took place via Google Docs. We did have our communication through Elluminate, but not in the same manner of other classes where that method is the dominant form of communication. Here we actually did more communication and collaboration via GoogleDocs and email and yet I felt a closer tie to this group than some of the other ones. It really changed my perspective on how network learning can function in an online class and how I might be able to implement those concepts and experiences into my offline classroom. Again, I can't speak for the other group members, but this past three weeks has definitely been a positive learning experience for me.

I also felt we had a very positive expereince preparing our presentation for this class. I had a really good time preparing the presentation on Google Docs and then actually going through the presentation as well. It was pretty cool presenting a new topic like that to my peers rather than my students that are much younger than me. Our peers had great questions and were very active which made the presentation that much more enjoyable. I also throoughly enjoyed the presentation I sat in on and participated in and wish that I had had the time to participate in more of the presentations. Overall, its been a very educational semester!

Lesson 5 Reflection...

This semester is challenging traditional notions of online and network learning. The Web 2.0 tools to which we've been introduced are more than web-based software. Web 2.0 platforms offer portals to new ways of interacting online.

The discussions among our classmates reflect much of the mental tug-of-war we are experiencing as we learn to drop old-think embedded concepts and pick up new distributed learning paradigms. Having grown accustomed to viewing computers and the internet as storage facilities where organizing, sorting, and retrieving are more easily facilitated (Web 1.0), I discover I'm conceptually challenged to take the next step of realizing how Web 2.0 connects us beyond the mere sharing of archived documents. Web 2.0 fosters new attitudes toward networking, collaborating, and generating creative portfolios, be they mashups of work, school, family, or anything else imagined.

Web 2.0 is a global sandbox (a creative commons) where we get to share EVERYthing. And since we is smarter than me, the new connected world is synergistically recreating the future landscape in which we live and learn.

Posting this comment on my ETC647 Blog at same time...

Trying to post here as well as on blog as a test.

in reference to: Example Pages (A Guide to Google Sites) (view on Google Sidewiki)