As I conclude my summer studies in course IDT 516, Internet
Resources for Education and Training, I find that my view of digital
competencies has expanded beyond what I expected from this course. While the
course began with the expected introduction to web searches and determining
reliable internet resources for information, the material has gone beyond this
to include consideration of online tools and websites that can enhance the
learning environment for learners and instructors.
The readings and online resources of this course provided a
clear guideline for implementing elearning techniques as well as exposure to a
variety of tools that I had not even considered for instructional purposes
prior to this course. Merrill’s focus on First Principles of Instruction is a
piece that I believe will be relevant to my professional and career goals.
These principles help the designer to maintain focus on the goal of the
instruction. As I work toward career goals in instructional design, this focus
will be important for everything from developing a portfolio to interviewing
for positions to completing work within the field.
During the course, the unit on wikis, blogs, and podcasts
added new and useful information to my current skill set. Familiar with all
three of these tools, this course provided me with the opportunity to use and
explore them further. Additionally, this course demonstrated the ways in which these
tools can be incorporated together for collaboration with others and for
myself.
It was a great experience to work in google docs with a
class partner. This is a great hands-on learning experience in communication,
project management, and product development. I learned about myself in this
exercise, implemented leadership skills, and through construction communication
my group completed the project on time successfully. It was of great value to
be able to work with someone you have never met, communicating in the myriad
ways available to us now through technology, in order to complete a project for
which both parties are responsible and motivated to accomplish.
Chapter 9 and the epilogue that follow in our text provide
detail on the many ways technology is changing the way we do education today.
It is exciting to think about how advanced our method of communication has
become and how widely we can share information compared to only decades ago
when I was in high school myself. As this chapter indicates, the Read/Write/Web
is here to stay, and it is advancing in ways we have not even realized yet. I remember
when the internet was a new idea! I remember classmates of mine and teachers
thinking “no one will ever use this”. Today we are so reliant on this
technology we wouldn’t know what to do without it.
Yet still, there are so many tools, so many options to explore,
we do not even take advantage of all the Read/Write/Web has to offer. This
chapter highlighted the very reason I was excited to explore this degree and
career path in IDT – this technology is ever-changing. The opportunity to
learn, to develop new skills, and to share with others is never ending. This is
what excited me about IDT. It is of great value to have professionals
researching these new technologies and designing instruction that will
encourage their implementation in classrooms. As we move on from this course,
there is much to carry with us, as IDT 516 provided not only new resources, but
demonstrated ways to encourage and instruct learners in using them. The
epilogue of the text provided an exciting glimpse into the future of a
successful lesson like this. Internet resources of the web used for time
management, information sharing, and instructional design conveniently
completed in one place with a reach as wide as the user chooses it to be.
