Final Course Reflection

This has been a great opportunity to become familiar with concepts, tools and aspects of I learning that I kept hearing about but remained largely ignorant of. If nothing else it has created an awareness of a world of educational tools that I can take tentative steps towards fully utilising as a part of my teaching practice. I must be really conscious of actively going back and exploring each of the aspects covered in this course so I will not lose the knowledge and skills I have developed over the semester. My digital vocabulary has certainly expanded and I have found myself referring to googledocs, tagalaxy and wikis in my general professional conversations.
I realise that students need to develop skills and sensibilities (guidelines) before using the Web 2.0 tools - otherwise the educational value will be overtaken by novelty/entertaining/game-playing mentalities that could undermine the learning experience. These are TOOLS to be used alongside more traditional methods of pedagogy as part of a whole learning experience. As mentioned in previous blogs, primarily students need to ne aware of privacy issues - that anything posted on the web can be there for a very long time. Students USE the skills developed during their educational experience - skills of analysis, communication, reflection, collaboration, literacy, creative thinking, etc. Web 2.0 is a pathway to new understanding, to organising knowledge, to utilise and further develop skills.
I can easily see the application of Bloom to the digital world - in fact an application of the taxonomy places the tools we have explored in perspective. We need to encourage students to move well beyond the basic ideas of just listing and recognising. A proper application of these amazing tools will assist students climb the ladder through explaining,comparing, organizing to critiquing, judging and, hopefully, to the point of actually designing and planning.