I feel that we in OLTD 505 have come a long way in the development of a supportive and sharing online community. It goes without saying that the activities and tools used in each course have contributed to this, but I feel that in OLTD505 we have moved to a new level. Together we have broken through a ceiling and moved beyond the basic and seem to be truly communicating and sharing. Now I am by no means saying that we have reached the nirvana of online community development, but we are, as a collective, moving in the right direction.
Some of us, it would seem, were already skilled in social media, others, such as myself, not so much. I have said it before and I will say it again; I am not a digital native. Throughout OLTD505 I have continued to learn new ways to use technology. I have contributed in a positive manner and done so only when I feel my comment, post or submission has value. Naturally a private person, putting it all out there was a daunting task, but I was also conscious of the information overload that we all have to deal with on a daily basis.
So my approach was a focus on quality. Upon reflection, I sought to achieve several things during my participation in the online OLTD505 community. I wanted to challenge myself to write with more freedom, to learn more about technology and tools, to monitor activity in as near of a real time manner as possible and to make positive replies and contributions that I felt would provide a benefit to members of my community. I feel that I have exceeded my own expectations of that.
The monitoring of activity in a real time fashion was relatively easy; I simply had to have 'feeds' go directly to my cell phone. This, for example, enabled me to monitor posts in Google +, which was my preferred networking tool. I found Google+ allowed me to express myself, submit more complete ideas and share greater resources. It also allowed me to commented easily on others posts in a public forum, join other communities and shared what I found of interest by sharing posts from other sites with our community.
Twitter, on the other hand, was something that I found hard to master. I followed tweets as best I could, becoming quite addicted to monitoring tweets but I struggled to gain a strong understanding of how to use the tools for effective communication. I did, of course, participate in Twitter, but where I found it of greatest use was being able to tweet about a new resource that I wanted to share with the group. In the end, Twitter proved itself to me as a powerful tool.
Blogging, being the third main community building tool, worked well for me. I enjoyed being able to share full thoughts in a more formal manner. Here, again, I enjoyed reading the thoughts and opinions of others and endeavored to comment as I thought appropriate.
All of the above built my confidence to ‘dive in’ and really try the water with regards to developing and working within open resources and building communities. I did this by challenging my Economics class to build an Open Educational Resource (OER) the shared their knowledge of the concept of Supply and Demand. Here, I took many ideas that we have shared and put them into play. Students researched OER’s and we used discussion boards to plan and support each other in the creation of the class website. Please visit their website by clicking the image above.
This has been quite the journey. It is also an opportune time to stop, have a break and reflect on how far I have progressed in my journey through the OLTD program. Although I have shared my experiences through my final project, which I did with Kym, I have placed it here once again as I feel it capture what I have learned.
Some of us, it would seem, were already skilled in social media, others, such as myself, not so much. I have said it before and I will say it again; I am not a digital native. Throughout OLTD505 I have continued to learn new ways to use technology. I have contributed in a positive manner and done so only when I feel my comment, post or submission has value. Naturally a private person, putting it all out there was a daunting task, but I was also conscious of the information overload that we all have to deal with on a daily basis.
So my approach was a focus on quality. Upon reflection, I sought to achieve several things during my participation in the online OLTD505 community. I wanted to challenge myself to write with more freedom, to learn more about technology and tools, to monitor activity in as near of a real time manner as possible and to make positive replies and contributions that I felt would provide a benefit to members of my community. I feel that I have exceeded my own expectations of that.
The monitoring of activity in a real time fashion was relatively easy; I simply had to have 'feeds' go directly to my cell phone. This, for example, enabled me to monitor posts in Google +, which was my preferred networking tool. I found Google+ allowed me to express myself, submit more complete ideas and share greater resources. It also allowed me to commented easily on others posts in a public forum, join other communities and shared what I found of interest by sharing posts from other sites with our community.
Twitter, on the other hand, was something that I found hard to master. I followed tweets as best I could, becoming quite addicted to monitoring tweets but I struggled to gain a strong understanding of how to use the tools for effective communication. I did, of course, participate in Twitter, but where I found it of greatest use was being able to tweet about a new resource that I wanted to share with the group. In the end, Twitter proved itself to me as a powerful tool.
Blogging, being the third main community building tool, worked well for me. I enjoyed being able to share full thoughts in a more formal manner. Here, again, I enjoyed reading the thoughts and opinions of others and endeavored to comment as I thought appropriate.
All of the above built my confidence to ‘dive in’ and really try the water with regards to developing and working within open resources and building communities. I did this by challenging my Economics class to build an Open Educational Resource (OER) the shared their knowledge of the concept of Supply and Demand. Here, I took many ideas that we have shared and put them into play. Students researched OER’s and we used discussion boards to plan and support each other in the creation of the class website. Please visit their website by clicking the image above.
This has been quite the journey. It is also an opportune time to stop, have a break and reflect on how far I have progressed in my journey through the OLTD program. Although I have shared my experiences through my final project, which I did with Kym, I have placed it here once again as I feel it capture what I have learned.