How I could describe my feelings and thoughts towards educational technology before and after this course? Honestly, I really didn’t have any major thoughts about educational technology before this course. I came to these minor studies because many people recommended it as practical and really rich subject. My idea of educational technology mainly was about what I’d seen before: PowerPoint presentations made by teachers and students, Word documents, Internet and different databases as references and full of information. We really haven’t used any technological tools besides computers and projectors on any of my classes. I guess many teachers are still traditional that way. In intro course this definetly changed. Although we made mindmaps in a traditional way with pen and paper, we also got know how to use tablets to create mind maps and share them with our class wireless. We have gotten to know of many tools in ICT workshops also. You can definetly say that my view on educational technology is wider now and I like it. It’s good to see how teachers are trained to get more hands on with technology and learn more how to make the best of it in teaching. It’s good that nowadays people see it more as gift then as a threat. Maybe before there was a tiny thought in my head that people who use educational technology will eventually replace traditional teaching methods with all sorts of technology. Is that the case? I really don’t believe so as it’s pretty clear that they can be used easily together and that way also could find the best of both worlds and use them. Of course use of technology brings up it’s own challenges to cope, but what approach are tool doesnt?
What about learning then? Well, this autumn has been great to reflect on the concept of learning, since alongside this course I’ve also had a course on psychology of learning in my major studies. I’ve always thought that learning as a concept is pretty hard to summarize with few words. It really has a lot of theories and meanings behind it. And what do I think now? I think that it is even harder if that’s possible, because in this course I’ve found new perspectives to see learning based on our various methods in this course for example. I have gotten to know learning theories during this course by main points and maybe all of them are better organized in my head but at the same time the connections between different concepts are getting more complicated as you can see that everything really can relate on pretty much anything. Below you can now see our groups two mind maps about learning:
In my first blog post about learning, I said that learning is a personal thing in a way. Some people learn by reading themselves and some people learn better by discussing and doing groupwork. I still believe that learning really is something that has no right or wrong method and each of us have our own styles to learn best. But for me personally, I have maybe understood the role of your own understanding in the process of learning. We all have our own ways to read and build images, knowledge and opinions in our heads. But really after discussing with your views with some people you can share opinions and then build a understanding together. I really haven’t thought about this before this autumn and now I understand how important that has been for me personally also and how that has developed my own learning without me even further noticing. When comparing these mindmaps you can clearly see the role of our Jigsaw sessions also. Throughout these sessions we have found new key points to learning which we maybe didn’t notice in the first mindmap. Our new mindmap is more organized in a way I think. Because before in our previous mind maps we were as a group saying and pointing out a lot of terms but we really didn’t know that much connections between them as we did in the later mind map.
Intro course offered a lot of working methods in a short time. In a way it’s a good thing because it gives a wide perspective to educational technology and learning also. I think that for me collaborative working sessions and jigsaw method really taught the role of discussion in learning. When you discuss with the expert teams you change your points of views and get good thoughts about the subject and in your home teams you know better what really are the main points of your article. And the best part in the home teams working was also the fact that when the articles were so close to each other it really brought up a lot of good questions and maybe it also helped you to understand your own article better also. Every week the summarizing of the four articles in to mind maps were good for learning, because they also had an affect on our final mind map of learning. ICT workshops like I said before, helped me to find many different tools that I really didn’t know that excisted. They also we’re pretty laid back, you really got to choose what you want to learn and how high you want to set your goals. That way every student can make those decisions based on their motivation and previous knowledge. Pecha Kucha taught me, that you really don’t need a lot of time to make your point. 20 seconds per slide is enough. And they are short, simple and effective because I can still remember many things about educational technology in many countries. Mostly about the course methods I have to say, I like how they all came together as one in the end. The mind map we made at first evolved during our collaborative working sessions and jigsaws. Also it was nice to see links there with the videolectures as well since Paul Kirschner had his word in both of these. The themes in lectures and the articles we’re also easy to combine and make connections. So some parts yes, I do think differently about learning after oll of these methods but some thoughts they have only made stronger. I can really say that if it is possible to use this many teaching methods in a course, people really should do that. It takes of course time to prepare and design but as you see the result, isn’t it worth it? This way people really get to see what is their way to learn for themselves. In a way any method can’t really be affective without persons own motivation and goals.
Last but not least, collaboration. I think collaborative learning had a big role in these course so I can see that it had an effect on my learning. Like I have said before the part of discussion and building our understanding together is something I value now much more. You can get so much more out of everything with interaction. I think that our roles, mine and other students, in the learning process were pretty similar. At least I have a thought that after discussing with the expert teams and sharing your meanings for the articles helped me somehow understand better and maybe trusting my own findings more. Together in our home teams, based on our articles, we really could build big pictures of things like personal learning enviroments and direct instructional guidance and so on. I’ve enjoyed collaborative work in this course because I think there is not as much of collaboration in my studies as there could and maybe should be.
I have now summarized shortly my thoughts of learning and teaching methods on this intro course and also reflected on the concepts of educational technology and learning. Maybe the concept of learning is never going to be clear and answered only one word or theory and that is good thing in my opinion. The concept has so many levels at this point and it can only grow them more in my head.
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