I have a blog!

Well, here we go.....

The children are growing up and it's time to begin a new adventure of my own. I have been teaching college for a number of years both online and on campus in the field of early childhood education where I am always impressed by the thoughtfulness and commitment of my students as they seek to improve their skills and become the best teachers they can be. It is the inspiration from them that led me to embark on my own learning adventure. Since I thoroughly enjoyed teaching online but felt somewhat inadequate in taking advantage of the latest in eLearning design and technology, I decided the Instructional Design and Technology Micromasters would be the perfect path. I explored other edX courses and found some that were extremely valuable as well. The "Leaders of Learning" through HarvardX and "Essentials of Cyber Security" through University of WashingtonX were both quite insightful. I would encourage any interested parties to check out either of these. "Leaders of Learning" challenged me to to think about new and innovative ways to learn, to look beyond traditional schools and discover more open, less formal, learner-directed designs. It introduced me to the concept of "bells to cells" in which students wait for a bell to ring in order to move from one box-like room where they've been learning one subject, to another box-like room to learn another. This is the method used widely by traditional schools of an education system which developed at the same time as the assembly lines and factories of the industrial age. Through the work I do with my teacher candidates I hope to instill a different view of education and learning in general. Together we work on designing curriculum that is real, meaningful, purposeful, and fun(!) in nature.

The cyber security class terrified me, quite honestly. Think of hackers going after major infrastructure or small but essential elements in nuclear reactors and tell me YOU aren't scared! However, this class along with a beginning coding class allowed me to get in touch with my nerdy, techy side and I did enjoy them. I plan to continue pursuing these areas of interest.

So, here I am at the tail end of the Learning Theories piece of the Instructional Design and Technology program. With my education degree, the theories were a review but it was interesting to apply them to eLearning. For instance, using Quizlet (digital flashcards) is so effective because it applies to a major learning theory that has proven useful for decades, Behaviorism. Modern approaches to Constructivism can involve Youtube videos to show "how" to do something. Cognitivism can be reached through reflection, recalling and manipulating information after the lesson is over.

But is the lesson ever really over?? Never! There is always more to learn. Let's get on with it!