After being out of the higher learning sphere for nearly a decade, it did take a bit of time to hit my stride as an academic writer. It is probably more accurate to say that I have not yet hit it, but am stumbling toward the straight direct line that such writing requires. In my writing for LRNT 521, I had a tendency to wax poetic in my blog posts, and be more philosophical in my writing. I suppose I had hoped to distil some profound understanding of the world of e-learning networks that no one had ever considered in quite the same way I had. Ultimately, I discovered, I was mostly rambling along the same lines as everyone else. It is hard to be original. It is more difficult still to be a quality content creator. I found the feedback from my various cohort members and my instructor for LRNT 521, Elizabeth Childs, to be especially helpful and encouraging in the development of my writing. My cohorts because of their complimentary comments on my blog posts, and Elizabeth because of her pointed critique of my academic assignments that both pointed out strengths and highlighted areas for growth in a way that made complete sense, and I hope from assignment 3 to 1, made for slight improvements to some aspects of my writing. Writing is a journey, and in just nine weeks I honestly do feel like I have come a long way. Continue reading Reflections on Academic Writing
Tag: #RRUMALAT
Reflections of a Digital Content Creator – Video Diary
Below is my synopsis of the journey I have begun as a MALAT student. It is not the flashiest as far as production values are concerned, but echoes much what my fellow MALATers have already said. I will be interested to look back on this video in a year’s time to see what has changed.
Video Reflection
The Digital Divide – Rural vs Urban in Canada
The following blog post was co-authored by Michael Chow, Marshall Hartlen and Andrea Livingstone
You can follow Michael here and Andrea here
Marshall’s thoughts: I am in the privileged urban side of the have/have nots. I have taken the availability of wi-fi and fast connection speeds for granted, and I am easily frustrated with lags in connection speed (this happens when working in my bedroom as our modem is not robust enough to deliver consistent full speed access at all hours) and then I am reminded of Louis CK’s frustrated rant “Its going to space! Would you give it a minute to get back from space!” (Tyler, 2015).
I am becoming aware of this divide; however, in my professional day to day I deal with a lot of students who, like Andrea stated above, have poor or no access to the internet once they leave the school. The majority of these students live in rural areas, and the biggest percentage of this group live on any one of the three reserves that are nearby. This has an impact on the way I teach these students, I cannot expect them to engage in the plethora of e-based activities I have created, and I can also appreciate the strong disadvantage this puts these kids at. The sad thing is, that I see it affecting their social lives as well. Because they do not have access to the internet when they leave the school their digital network disappears, and with it the important social aspects of the high school experience, to a degree at least. Continue reading The Digital Divide – Rural vs Urban in Canada
The Connectedness of Being
I wasn’t really sure what I expected to find when I mapped my online network. I was also unsure of which network to focus on. I decided against trying to visually represent my largest network, Facebook, because it is not as important to me as a professional. The people I connect with on Facebook I do not want to have impacting my digital reach as a professional, though in saying that I suppose I am a bit naive to believe that to actually be the case. I have a digital voice as an everyday person, and I have a voice as a professional. I have also, on occasion, made that voice heard on Facebook, though I am now wilfully trying to stop this practice, hence its seclusion here. Continue reading The Connectedness of Being
Understanding Digital Literacy in pursuit of Digital Me
As a high school social studies, and language arts teacher, I deal a fair bit with the study of humanity. How did we get here? Where are we going? And, why are we in this hand-basket? A point that I stress to my students in various different contexts is that we are living through a very significant moment in human history. I tell them that just as we currently study the Industrial Revolution, the students of the future will study this period in history, commonly referred to as The Digital Revolution, in much the same way. Where we currently look at the importance of the spinning jenny to the textile industry, they will look at the advent of the personal computer and its effect on communication, learning, and society in general. This will lead to a discussion of related technologies and the dawn of the age of connectivity. Continue reading Understanding Digital Literacy in pursuit of Digital Me
Organising and Citing Scholarly Research Using Chrome Extensions: A Video-tutorial
Hello fellow #RRUMALAT cohorts!
Although only a couple of weeks in, I am already finding the need to get myself organised as far as my research and citations go. I am already bogged down with article storage and citations, but I have a hack.
I have created this video-tutorial that outlines the usage of two Google Chrome extensions that I have found useful. I hope you find it useful! I welcome any feedback, happy researching!
Resident Visitor Mapping
I had been aware of the concept of digital natives, and digital immigrants (Prensky, 2001), and was aware that I was and always would be the latter. So when I initially approached this assignment, I approached thinking that digital immigrant was synonymous with a certain degree of digital ineptitude that I would never be able to overcome. After reading “The Resident Visitor Typology” (White and Le Cornu, 2011) I came to a new understanding, and my the self discovery of the “digital me” was profound, and I am now seeing myself in a new way, and am conscious of trying to keep certain elements of my personal resident-visitor typology hidden, and make others more public.
Reflections on LRNT 521 Symposiums: Openness is the Way forward!
I am excited to get going on this journey at long last! The most surprising thing for me in this first week was learning about the wide variety of applications for technology integration there exists in the economy, and the variety in scope and sequence for research opportunities further down the road. I forgot that the name of our program is both learning, and technology. I had initially ignored the latter, or rather I did not think of it in the way it has been presented to me this week. I just thought that I was going to blast forward with all sorts of new technological ideas and gadgets and that I would be at the leading edge of ed-tech by the time I finished my, what is sure to be ground-breaking, research in year two!
Continue reading Reflections on LRNT 521 Symposiums: Openness is the Way forward!