My Closing Thoughts and Final Blog

Faith Vietti
Week 14

December 8, 2014
LTEC 642

Herein lie my closing thoughts on what has been truly an enjoyable learning adventure into the world of social media. Admittedly, I came into this course reluctantly, mainly because of my concern for privacy and sharing information publicly. Another reason was that I was uncertain of the value of what I would learn. However in retrospect, I do see the value and benefit of “authentic learning through collaboration”.

As this course has been primarily centered on collaboration and authentic learning pedagogical principles, each tool learned and collaboration has furthered my respect and appreciation for the new technologies adopted and the collaborative learning that took place with online group activities.

While in the thick of things, I wasn’t able to see personal development or growth so clearly. Now, taking a step back, to look reflectively at where I started and where I am at the conclusion of this program, tells me that much was achieved.

The highlights for me began the first week with the personal introductions. This was the first time for me to use an online tool such as Animoto. It was also the first time for me to create a multimedia object where I would cut, splice and edit a video segment, and drop it into an online tool. The reading for that week that was of particular benefit was the journal article by Kristin Sherman, How social media changes our thinking and learning. And indeed it has done just that, “it has changed my thinking and learning.”

The outcomes from the collaborative learning activities, which provided authentic tasks, did lead to deeper learning, and higher levels of cognition.  It was of interest to me that those with whom I collaborated in week 4 on the topic of multitasking, lead me to understand that many of us do multitask. However, the question we pondered was how effective are we at multitasking. It was a lively and memorable dialogue, one that I appreciated; which lead me to the conclusion that everyone in the learning activity had a propensity toward doing a number of things at one time. One case in point was The TCCfx Mini-Conference. It was insightful and more than I expected it would be; however, trying to multitask and use Twitter to tweet while listening to speakers was quite the task.

Other highlights were Content curation, building a Twitter network and building social capital with Pinterest and Storify. Throughout the online learning process, I least enjoyed blogging; not because I dislike writing, rather, much of the time it seemed to be linear communication without much interaction. Without active and engaging discussion, I felt I was merely writing for the sake of writing in a vacuum. 

What I enjoyed the most was our collectively coming together on Mondays through Blackboard Collaborative. It was such a wonderful way to hear the voices and thoughts of others. Through it all, I increased my knowledge, was able to use the Web 2.0 tools and apply it to real-life situations. 

Priceless. 

References

Sherman, K. (2013). How social media changes our thinking and learning. The Language Teacher, 37(4). Retrieved from jalt-publications.org/files/pdf-article/37.4tlt_plenary3.pdf