ETL523 Assignment 1 reflection

This has been an interesting assignment on a number of levels. Having to create a digital artifact was a great way to encourage me to explore new tools and ways of creating and 'selling' information and ideas. I can now see how this could be a useful tool in the classroom.

The group aspect has also been interesting too. I can also appreciate the value of collaborating and would like to add some of the group members to my professional learning network. I have made more connections and had more useful interactions about an assignment through this process than in any other assignment so far. The group work certainly does promote discussion and bring a level of collegiality to things. On the downside the variations of pace of work were hard to manage - I often read very widely and take some time to bring all the strands together - which is usually only a week or so out from the due date - but this assignment forced me to move faster and i don't think that I had fully internalised all the information when we were being pushed to make decisions. As a result i'm not entirely sure that our approach is what I would be recommending now. How the wiki is marked is also interesting as the number of edits doesn't necessarily reflect the amount of thought or work that has been put in - there has definitely been discrepancies in that area.

well ... here's my digital artifact. I arrived at the idea that you need to follow 3 steps to teach digital citizenship in a class digital learning environment. I haven't gone into depth about how the choice of the digital learning environment can  empower good digital citizenship practice by virtue of its design and way its used - rather this is a how to for those who may not know where to start.

DLEs and group work 2

We have almost completed the initial part of our group work. And I have been pleasantly surprised. The googledoc creation and use has been quite successful as a way of communicating and adding ideas - though it would be great if some mechanism for alerting others to updates was included rather than having to forum post to let others know about updating.

Having said that I have now been encouraging others to utilise googledocs as a means of collaboratively adding to docs rather than emailing  versions. In reflection, I should not be surprised about this as I have recently felt that the most appealing pedagogical framework to me is social constructivism. I can see how this assignment and the way it is constructed fits within this and the model of a PBL or inquiry learning.

DLEs and group assignments

I confess that group assignments rather frighten me. I'm used to managing my own time and workload and to having control over the level of quality of my work (yes i'm a bit of a control freak and I lilke to do well). However, i'm hoping that this experience will be a good one and that the group i'm placed in will be cohesive.

In terms of DLEs and digital citizenship it has occurred to me that my initial idea of what a DLE is was not what narrower than the focus of this unit. I was thinking of it in terms of actual 'environments' or platforms rather than a DLE as encompassing the skills, tools, habits and responsibilities in using and accessing digital resources for learning. In some ways the broader definition allows wider probing of how DLEs can be developed and utilised to foster good digital citizenship skills and awareness.

I am really far behind in my readings and course work (yes already and its only the first few weeks!) and am feeling like I don't have a lot of the knowledge and understanding necessary to adequately contribute to the group work yet. I'm hoping in the next few posts that i may actually have some comments on some literature to add.