Personal Blogs

This is my first blog and therefore my first blog post.

I have found the first 2 weeks of the course a real mixed bag. On a positive note it is great to be back into formal [ish] learning. For many years as a trainer I have being doing short skills based courses and a rather large amount of development. Career wise the development has been extermely beneficial and has an immediate impact, but as I said it's great to be back at, if not in, college!

Another positive element has been the challenge of elearning, having to check websites, mails and forums for all the information is new to me, and has given me a new insight into my career goal of setting up a blended learning program with my employer.

Finally it has given me a renewed interest in the Internet, I used to love the web but using it as a tool for work has taken the fun out of it, I do use facebook but generally do not use many of the "new internet applications".

I find the OU website slow and am having difficulties with the FirstClass software, but I guess these maybe just tech issues relating to Vista and my b-band connection.

As a trainer though, I am constantly assessing training methods, learning objectives and the organisation of training. I was initially apprehensive having not used the OU or elearning before, but I was rest assured when I spotted others in the same boat. I did find it tricky though in terms of the answer to everything seems to be to set up a forum! So I log on to do a bit of study but spend the best part of an hour bouncing around forums reading endless posts etc. There was also a bit terminolgy flying around, "lets set up a wiki!" I firmly believe that if elearning is to transgress away from highly technical people to the general learning public, this jargon based style will have to change, we can't be slaves to forums, we should be using them!

I was on holidays last week and I felt under pressure having to complete a group activity online with strangers, while still getting used to the elearning culture, suffering tech issues and on a subject completly new to me: eportfolios. I stayed up to 1am Friday morning to submit work to my group, but realised that not everybody was doing it, in fact people were still joining the course! What's that all about? Maybe we should create a forum about it!!