Collaborative Reflection

I commenced the weekly blogging activities just over 6 weeks ago with some reservation about the benefit I would receive out of participating in them. Having never participated in this kind of activity and ICT before now, it was a very new learning journey for me, especially with the amount of ICT I was going to be using. However I enjoy writing so was looking forward to recording my thoughts and learning each week.

I was unsure about the idea of everyone reading each other’s blogs from the point of view of marking and being graded. My initial thoughts were that people may just copy ideas and thoughts from other people and not do their own work and use other peoples writing. However I soon saw that this was just a different way of learning and being educated and one that I see true value in.

Other students having the ability to read and comment on my writings each was were exciting and daunting at the same time. It was exciting to see what other student’s opinions of my ideas and thoughts about the various ICT’s were, but at the same time daunting as it was not only the lecturer who was viewing my work but everybody. Although daunting this had its benefits as everyone has different viewpoints and so you are not only gaining feedback and a point of view from one person but many which resulted in a greater understanding of each task.

I also found it great to read other peoples blogs, especially if they were studying the same discipline as me. This way I was able to gain an even broader understanding of how that particular ICT could be used in my classroom and form part of my digital pedagogy and expand my knowledge base even further.  This was also beneficial in the later weeks where we were choosing one out of the three options to blog about as there was such a variety of different methods and ICT’s used.  I found reading the SAMR model of different blogs very informative and it gave me a variety of ideas and ways to integrate ICT in my students’ lessons and for them to achieve a higher level of thinking.

As a teacher I will continue to explore online learning communities and gain an even greater understanding of the benefits of them and I will ensure my students participate in this form of advantageous collaboration.