IDT 516 - the conclusion

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.