Educational Leaders & Blogs

Blogs are the journals of the present times. Principal-researchers are confronted with having to track, collect and reflect upon their own thinking and the thinking of the people involved in their research. Traditionally, digital-immigrants would tend to keep a journal, notebook of some sort, to express their ideas and chronologically or retrospectively reflect on their writings. Weblogs, or blogs for short, are the "nowadays" journal format. They are not only easy to create, but also easy to share. It could be authored by one or more people and commented upon in a clean, organized and accessible way.  Though formatted in reverse chronological order, it would allow any person with authorized access to browse it as if it were a hardcopy diary.

Educational Leaders benefit from this type of journaling tool where information can be enriched with text, images and links to videos and other blogs. Fully interactive and shareable  with other "educational bloggers", this format is a very powerful tool to track ideas overtime.

Action Research Reflection

I have to confess when I first read I would be taking research as my next course I was a little bit scared and worried. It sure sounded like all of the other research classes I have had in the past. After the first week of readings and videos I was proven wrong by a long shot.

In the past two months I have learned to not have any preconceptions ahead of starting a new course in the Master's in Educational Technology. There is nothing that I know that can really relate to what I am learning now. And it is not that I know nothing, but the fact that with the evolution of new technologies, nothing is seen through the same glass we used in the past decade.

Action Research is more than just researching. It is total involvement in the process of inquiry. A process where the researched and the researcher are one and only. Reading and learning about research in this manner has changed my perspective and value for reflection. Where before I used to yawn at the sound of both words -research and reflection -, now I see the connection and the true value of self-analysis.

I particularly like the term "practitioner inquiry" (Dana, 2009) to describe the process of action research. It encloses all we can say about action research in two words that are hard to misunderstand.

ShiftHappens Educational 2010

Course Reflections - EDLD 5306 Concepts of Educational Technology

As I began this course I had no idea what to expect, I obviously assumed that I would learn what it means to teach technology, but I have to confess I had no idea of the complexity of the matter. More so, this was my first time enrolling on an online-based formal course and even though I had had classes online before, I knew this would be different. Put those things together and you get a blast! In all the meanings of the word, I was blown out by the amount of information, ended up exhausted but gained a lot more than I had imagined possible and thoroughly enjoyed the ride!

If my expectation was to end the course having a better understanding of what Educational Technology implied... boy, was I off track? I never imagined this to be such an eye-opener! There are so many lines of thinking, issues to take into consideration and roadblocks in the implementation of technology that I had never thought of. My vision was narrowed by my confidence in my technological skills. Now I feel I have a long way to go before I can truly say I am a “techie”, and I see that as challenge to keep learning and discovering all the wonders of this technological era we live in.

Since the outcome of this course surpassed my expectations to no end, I believe what needs to change now is the relevancy of my work. It is of upmost importance that all we learned is implemented in our classrooms, in our campuses and in all other educational areas. The world is catching up and we are now challenged to keep up!

I have a greater understanding of where our educational system is heading, or where should it aim to go. It is my goal now to help my peers realize how our world has changed, and how we have to “keep moving to go find our cheese”.

I would only wish we had more time to deepen our knowledge of concepts and tools for educational technology. I feel 5 weeks was not enough. Even though I was able to complete all my assignments pretty much on time, I think there were moments were I wished I had two weeks to work on a specific assignment. If one thing was discouraging it was the amount of work for the amount of completion time. Some activities were easy and fun and I wanted to stay working on them, others were so difficult my brain just needed more time. Either way, time was a constriction. But we prevailed!

I foolishly started the course thinking I knew what all that was about, just to realize by the end of the first week that I knew very little. There was so much to be learned and so many experiences to be had, that now I feel I don’t want to stop. I see that my way of looking at technology has changed, I am now more careful about all the details implied in the use of technology in the school setting, like copy right laws or cyber safety, or even administrative decisions that shape the course of our digital path. I guess I was a user, but not a teacher, and definitely a leader to friends, but not to the community at large. I hope all this new knowledge helps me change my attitude towards the implementation and use of technology in the classroom and my approach when helping others obtain knowledge.

It was a great adventure and I enjoyed it to the max!

Reference:

Johnson, Spencer. Who moved my cheese?: an a-mazing way to deal with change in your

work and in your life. Random House Business Books, 2002. Print.

Amazing Skills...

This shows what we have been talking about. There is no school system that can target the amazings skills this person has!

I bet as a student he was another "dyslexic kid" and probably even spent his whole educational experience with D's and F's as a grade...

Animoto mini-video

I was able to complete my 30 sec bio. Want to check it out?

:)




Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Wiki, wiki... waka...

I finally created my wiki page. Curiously enough, I found it quite more difficult than creating the blog...

Especially when trying to customize it, maybe because I would have to pay $$ to have more "features" available. Who knows? It could have been I was just tired!

http://spriteknow.wikispaces.com/