Ends and Beginnings

Here we are at the end of the semester- one down, three to go for me. It's been an interesting experience with a range of emotions about the program as a whole. New campus, professors, classes. I never realized just how comfortable I was in my old programs of psychology and sociology until I was dropped in the middle of central new york with a current temperature of 22 degrees outside (aka REALLY COLD).

These classes have also provided me with something that I've never encountered before- having semester long projects. It's a much different learning experience than writing a paper that only covers a couple weeks worth of material. So being posed with the question 'What did I learn?' is loaded. I learned that I have a really hard time focusing on long standing projects. I always have intentions of starting strong, but as the semester continues on (week ten doldrums, anyone?) it gets harder and harder to find the motivation to continue. Through blogging specifically, I learned that topic is imperative. We're all capable of sharing our ideas, but we need to have a burning passion for it. Outside of academics I'm passionate about cooking; finding recipes, trying new ones, experimenting with different ingredients, etc. So maybe I can challenge myself during 2010 to start and keep up a food blog.

That ties into the next question 'How can I improve my blogging?' I feel like the only way to improve is it keep at it, and keep at it with a subject that I feel strongly about, or something that interests me immensely. One of the other things that I've learned about myself during this first semester of graduate school is that I'm only going to be successful if I engage myself inactivities outside of the classroom to improve my skills. I can talk about instructional design until I'm blue in the face but I'm only going to get good at it if I'm actually involved in a project.

So maybe if I do take up that food blog, or a blog about anything else I can improve my communication skills, develop and craft my style and then put those skills to use in my work for this program.

One thing that I've also come to realize is that educator can mean more than just the person standing in front of a classroom with students. We all bring something different to share, and we can all become students of our peers. Blogging provides an open forum for an individual, or group of individuals to share their ideas. The internet as a whole allows us to interact with individuals that we otherwise would not have the opportunity to learn from. Because of this, educators should be looking towards the internet to find others to learn from. Not only are we a part of this program to become successful Instructional Designers, we're also here to learn how to become life long learners. And being an effective educator starts with being a student learning from any and every resource we can find.

Sorry for the missing blog last week- things were quite hectic getting another class wrapped up.

Steve asked an interesting question in a comment in reference to a believe
one of his relative has:

Is it worth telling non-native/non-participants to join "since no one's
really watching anyway"?

To which my response is a resounding and emphatic "YES!". This is actually one of the reasons that I do like internet forums, it acts as a time capsule of information. And though a website or forum may get few hits a week, those are still a few more than none. It's a means to share and disseminate information with others. It works quite similarly as a blog, but in a different format. Sometimes people will reply and share information, other times they will not. but if we are looking to contribute and share knowledge, would it not be beneficial to find a community of individuals to share with opposed to starting a blog or a website that may never be seen by others for a variety of other reasons? Search engines provide website results based on "hits" or views or because you've paid for advertisement, so starting a new website makes it more difficult to share because you have to start from scratch. But if you go someplace that already has hits, and already comes up on google searches, your thoughts are more likely to reach other people.