Personal Blogs

The supplementary acitvity 5.3 was to develop a profile for a typical H808 participant.  I think that the group developed a really good survey.

I did feel a bit overwhelmed participating in that activity as a couple of the cohort had started it very quickly and practically developed the whole questionairre.  This meant that rather than being involved in the collaboration on an equal footing I found that I was only able to comment on work done.  I was able to contribute a couple of questions that I felt had not been thought of.

I understand that some people will start on the activities sooner than others but it does make me feel as though I am continually playing catch up or watching from the sidelines.  I suppose one thing I could do is start another supplementary activity in the unit rather than trying to work on everything.  I think I am, also still trying to work through the material in a consecutive order.  I do realise that I may have to start the supplementary activities whilst still doing other bits of the unit however I do find this hard.

Despite teaching reflective practice to physiotherapy students for a number of years I find that I am not a natural reflective student.  However I understand the benefits of reflection for deeper learning so am trying to do this.  I don't think blogging automatically encourages reflection as it is easy to only write the facts.  However, I try to keep in my mind a reflective cycle (or at least questions to prompt reflection) as I am writing.  If I am totally honest my main push for doing this is the assessment process.

 

The task to work together to identify drivers of eportfolio around the world worked fairly well and we able to produce a template that we were all happy with.  I started of the communication for our group and the board and tried to keep the group on task.  Another group member developed a document on Google Docs. This was a suitable medium to use as it was easy to work on collaboratively and could be accessed online.

I felt that is was difficult to gauge whether everyone had the same understanding of the task as we did not have an initial discussion to clarify this. I jumped in and offered to read the first 3 texts.  Then throughout the task I tried to pull the group together and clarify thoughts. There was some response from a couple of individuals and I was mindful not to be too bossy and also mindful that on this type of course everyone is working at different times.  However I feel the task would have been more collaborative if there had been some discussion about the papers rather than each person just putting in the results.  Looking back on the discussion board and the Google Doc I can see that I have been at fault doing this as well as others in the group. Because of this I did not feel I had a full picture of the drivers for eportfolios worldwide and therefore I read all the core texts for myself.

Using the framework for Personal Developmentto assist my reflection I believe I have worked mainly within the competences of communication and research and partly in the practice and technology related competences.

In communication I have shown skills, proactivity and reflection.  I worked proactively by starting the conversation on the discussion board and continuing throughout the task to communicate my ideas with the group. On reflection I feel I may have more sucessful by suggesting the group discuss our understanding of the task and agree goals at the beginning.  I think my contributons to the discussion board and the Google Doc show proactivity and these can be seen viw the links below.

In research I have shown skills in reading academic papers by completing the reading list, making sense of the information and being able to decide which is the salient information. This also show my ability to critique.

For the practice related competences I have shown knowledge of use of eportfolios in Higher Education by analysing and presenting a description of a case study.

For the technology based competences I have shown the skill iln using Google Docs.

 

http://www.tinyurls.co.uk/I14833 Collaborative work

http://www.tinyurls.co.uk/K14835 Discussion Board

 

 

The supplementary activity said upload your blog URL to the course Wiki.  Simple I thought.

Ha ha; not really. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong but I obviously wasn't following the instructions correctly.  Anyway my desperation turned to joy (ok, well maybe not quite joy) when I found a posting from a student with details of a great website to learn HTML.

Now I have always been the type of person who has gone totally blank when faced with anything that is too technical. My interest and, I suppose, expertise is the teaching and learning side and therefore I like my eLearning ready packaged, ( a bit like my meat).  But...I went online to the aforementioned  website.

And....ta daaa

I put in the code and my blog url is on the wiki.

What have I learned?

1. Sharing is a great thing and I will definately follow suit if I think I have a good thing I know about.
2. Don't be afraid to try something different it may not be as hard or complicated as first anticipated.

Roll on the next challenge