My Very First Blog Post
Greetings fellow classmates and other unexpected visitors.
Welcome to my very first blog post (ever) as a part of the emerging community of inquiry in EDUC 5045G. First, a little about me. My name is Joshua and this will be my 8th course in the M.Ed project stream- which means this is my last course in the program. I am working simultaneously on the first project course with Dr. Hunter. The focus of my project involves examining design factors to ameliorate low participation and completion rates in massive open online courses based on my positive experiences with the asynchronous activities in Principle of Learning EDUC 5001G (Pol). While I worked in South Korea for several years as an English language instructor, I have returned home to Canada for the summer to finish up the program and my project. This summer, I will also be working as a research assistant to Dr. Campbell and Dr. Hunter, alongside one of our other classmates Jesse Parsons. My role in this position is to gather information regarding the activities and structures of research centers in higher education to identify current trends and assist in the establishment of a new international research center at UOIT in collaboration with Durham College and three separate institutes in Dublin, Ireland- That was tough to fit into one sentence!
IF it hasn't become obvious already, I'll state for the record, that my interests are...diversified. However, I plan to incorporate all of these interests in some way into my blog posts and our class discussions as best I can. I chose blogger as a platform for my blog, well, because it was the first on the list of suggestions provided by Dr. Power- Thanks, Rob! So far, I am finding it easy to use; however, I think that I will need to spend some time playing around with the settings and layout.
From this course, the readings, my reflective blog posts, and my interactions with all of you, I hope to gain greater insight into designing online collaborative learning experiences that really encourage participation. I truly believe in the potential that digital technologies have to disseminate information, democratize education, and foster the creation of networks and relationships around the world. For my lesson plan, I intend to focus on the use of wikis as a digital tool for co-constructing knowledge in online formal education settings. Specifically, creating a lesson plan that helps students become comfortable in the social-constructivist activity of creating a wiki- Something that I had trouble with in my experience with wikis at UOIT. But, more on this in a subsequent blog.
For now, in the spirit of creating a community of inquiry and getting to know all of you in this class a little bit better, please check out, if you haven't already, my ThingLink below. I wonder if I learned how to embed one of these yet? I hope it doesn't turn out to be some plain old boring link again!
Welcome to my very first blog post (ever) as a part of the emerging community of inquiry in EDUC 5045G. First, a little about me. My name is Joshua and this will be my 8th course in the M.Ed project stream- which means this is my last course in the program. I am working simultaneously on the first project course with Dr. Hunter. The focus of my project involves examining design factors to ameliorate low participation and completion rates in massive open online courses based on my positive experiences with the asynchronous activities in Principle of Learning EDUC 5001G (Pol). While I worked in South Korea for several years as an English language instructor, I have returned home to Canada for the summer to finish up the program and my project. This summer, I will also be working as a research assistant to Dr. Campbell and Dr. Hunter, alongside one of our other classmates Jesse Parsons. My role in this position is to gather information regarding the activities and structures of research centers in higher education to identify current trends and assist in the establishment of a new international research center at UOIT in collaboration with Durham College and three separate institutes in Dublin, Ireland- That was tough to fit into one sentence!
IF it hasn't become obvious already, I'll state for the record, that my interests are...diversified. However, I plan to incorporate all of these interests in some way into my blog posts and our class discussions as best I can. I chose blogger as a platform for my blog, well, because it was the first on the list of suggestions provided by Dr. Power- Thanks, Rob! So far, I am finding it easy to use; however, I think that I will need to spend some time playing around with the settings and layout.
From this course, the readings, my reflective blog posts, and my interactions with all of you, I hope to gain greater insight into designing online collaborative learning experiences that really encourage participation. I truly believe in the potential that digital technologies have to disseminate information, democratize education, and foster the creation of networks and relationships around the world. For my lesson plan, I intend to focus on the use of wikis as a digital tool for co-constructing knowledge in online formal education settings. Specifically, creating a lesson plan that helps students become comfortable in the social-constructivist activity of creating a wiki- Something that I had trouble with in my experience with wikis at UOIT. But, more on this in a subsequent blog.
For now, in the spirit of creating a community of inquiry and getting to know all of you in this class a little bit better, please check out, if you haven't already, my ThingLink below. I wonder if I learned how to embed one of these yet? I hope it doesn't turn out to be some plain old boring link again!
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