FINAL BLOG ENTRY 2019-01-08

 Happy new years everyone! Due to some sickness over the holidays am I now back on my feet’s and ready to take on this final blog entry for this fantastic course! Here goes.

 

First of all, I was somewhat skeptic towards the course and all the new learning utiltiies that we were required to make use of, such as different digital tools for presenting our collective work. I always thought, why not use Power point all the way, that is what I always do and that works all the time? However, after some struggling I got the hang of things and learned the utility of using other tools than those that I was already acquainted with. By doing so have I learned the use of different tools which in turn have enabled me to be more flexible.

 

What I mean by flexible is not just widening my own abilities to present information and different material, but also accommodating different needs other than my own. For some courses it may be the case that the learning done by the students can be enabled through other means or that some types of learning intake are facilitated through other means than using power point. However, even if the course has only scratched on the surface of these tools, it is a good way for opening up one’s eyes for other ways.

 

I have also learned during the course to work in a more collaborative fashion. During my daily life as a teacher while working as a researcher have I come to realize that the teaching that I conduct is very solitary in a way. I guess my colleagues encounter similar issues as me while educating but I have no real grasp of how they experiences it. While working collaborative as we have done in this course have I learned a lot of different strategies and techniques that could be used and put into practice.

 

I also think that the collaborative work in this course have been enriching in that it has been multi-cultural, i.e. participants from all over the world with different know-hows and experiences. That is something that is otherwise completely missing in my daily work.

 

I will most definitely take these experiences with me while carrying out my up-coming teaching this semester. However, I am not all that sure if the different digital tools will come into use but I will try to find a way to implement them into my teaching. Perhaps they are more suited for distance courses and I don’t teach at distance. One powerful tool that we have not used in the course is the use of a voting application. I don’t know what it is called but it works like this. You create a poll on the Internet and you tell your students about them and they can go into the website and vote. The percentage will be presented immediately as soon as the poll closes and then you can start to discuss the results in the classroom. I think that is a perfect tool for starting a conversation and having a discussion, since there will always differences in the disparity of how people have voted. This will allow for people to discuss the results and the different answers without ever having to disclose exactly how oneself voted, so it guarantees anonymity and for reasoning ex hypothesis.

 

As a final remark, I am glad I took this course and I really thing that I have received more insights into different peoples needs and acquired a more nuanced set of flexibility that I didn’t have when I started out. I also had fun during the course and that is always a plus!

 

Good luck to everybody!

 

Anders