Refections based on M.Ed. course “Leadership for Technology in Schools”
(Include a compelling reflection…an irresistible idea…. see short video embedded).
The
first reflection that comes to my mind when I think of the course “Leadership
for Technology in Schools” is that our course professor, Dr Mikton is a very
good model on how to succeed in this leadership. His course has a very solid
structure, he gives us all the information and resources needed… and much more.
Everything is very organized within the website and google aps and it is easy
to access. My question is: how does he find the time to do all that and give us
all thoughtful comments on each of our assignments? I personally struggle with
my timing. I had allocated 5 hours per week to study this course and I always
end up spending much more. Sometimes because I have to (time-consuming tasks)
sometimes because I want to as many of the tasks lead to other sources, which
are also very interesting.
I
really like the idea of finding knowledge in different sources, and not just
the traditional scholarly articles. Youtube videos, TED talks, and our
excellent group discussion gives us unlimited power. Often it is when I start
writing a post to reflect on one of these sources that I discover some of the
ideas that had not registered well in my brain after a passive experience.
The
most compelling reflection is that this course has encouraged me to expand my
professional goals further: I plan to do a PhD in the near future!
I
already have a couple of possible projects for my PhD and they are both closely
related to the use of technology in Education. In one of them I plan to
investigate possibilities of creating an intranet for a school or university.
There
are three things that encouraged me to do this project:
1. The need for an intranet from my school. Often situations
of crisis lead to development and innovation. In this case my current school’s
politics do not allow my solution to be applied. So my proposal is waiting to
be used.
2. One of the tasks I did for the Leadership for Technology
in Schools inspired me to develop this proposal for other schools. You will be
able to read more about this project in my Leadership for Technology in
School’s blog post: http://leadership-technology.blogspot.ch/2013/01/what-are-some-key-areas-to-focus-on-in.html
3. Finally, my partner, who works at the Faculty of Education
of Zaragoza University, encouraged me to pursue my project under the frame of a
PhD and to start looking for Universities/Schools to host/finance my project.
Thank you for your positive feedback Alvaro, just for the record I am not a Dr, just an educator with a Masters and a lot of experience consulting and presenting on the topics we engage with.
ReplyDeleteI agree that often online courses can seem deceptive on the amount of work which is required to engage with them, preparing them is extremely time consuming especially if you try to provide a robust series of options, learning styles through multiple platforms, but not doing this is setting up both the instructor and student for a lot of frustration. It seems we as a class have found a good balance for the use of the tools.
I am so excited to hear that the course has motivated you to further explore this topic at a higher level working on a Doctorate. This is fantastic. The topic and focus you are considering I think is extremely interesting, intranets often are a challenge for schools, and having something developed maybe in the Joomlahttp://www.joomla.org/ environment might be a great way to explore the possibilities. I think if you could use this in a real situation as you describe the experience and work would be most authentic and give you a good platform for trial and beta testing. It seems you have developed some good contacts to nice one.
I really look forward to hearing more about this project, wonderful to see how aspects of the course have inspired you.
kind regards
John