Tag: metathink

The assignment to write rich reflections on Doug Belshaw’s book, The Essentials Elements of Digital Literacies and post them in the book’s wiki was a new challenge. I wrote my reflection of each chapter as I read it. Some may have read the entire book and then gone back and reflected. I felt that writing as I read allowed me to be most honest about that particular moment.

Getting the text into the wiki was an additional challenge. I used Word to type my notes and then wordpress blog post draft mode to write the reflection. I copied and pasted my draft post into the wiki and then used the cheatsheet provided by Chris to format. With some help from a classmate I managed to post some pictures in the wiki, but only the blog post included the linked video. I regret that I cannot locate the tweet or email to credit and thank my classmate and my memory is faulty (perhaps Hailey??).

I think Chris gave us this assignment not only so we could benefit from reading the book, but to expand our own digital literacy and get us thinking about the use of wikis in reflective writing. Getting to participate in the Google Hangout with Doug Belshaw was fantastic.

I liked that this assignment was a change of pace from reading and critiquing. I enjoy trying to puzzle things out  even when I’m a bit scared that I’ll just blow up my whole wordpress site. The plugins and widgets were and still are the most challenging part for me. It is always something I can come back to play with more when I want a break from deep thinking on my other assignments.

I am liking wordpress and am thinking ahead of how to either merge previous work into this site or to use it for launching future explorations.

I think Chris assigned it for various reasons: to give us a variety of assignment types, to widen our skills, to challenge us to be brave, and to experience what we may ask of our own students.

My only advice to a future student is to have fun with it and don’t be shy about asking others what they used to cause specific bling in their blogs.

Strangely, the digital citizenship assignment gave me the most difficulty. I say ‘strangely’ because I had explored this topic somewhat in collection 1. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t know exactly where to take it from there. Instead of building upon what I had done, I tried to recreate everything. I did not allow myself to look at how my classmates handled the assignment until it was long overdue and I was stumped with sort of a writing block on it. Meanwhile I became engrossed in the required readings for the collection and felt like I’d gotten ahead of the topic and was tripping over my feet.

Writing is a laborious process for me. I had been told in the past not to worry so much about good writing, just to write and write all I can because eventually the good writing would come out. I wonder if that will happen by the end of this course (the good writing, I mean). I won’t hold my breath.

I think Chris required the digital citizenship assignment because we needed to try to figure out some direction for ourselves in this class. As far as advice for a future student, I really don’t have any for them. If I could figure out how to unblock that writing, I’d share it. I’ve lost count of my edits on it and have left it sit for 10 days now so don’t even know where I’ve left off. It’s my last item for collection 2 and my goal was to complete it over a week ago. Since it’s almost tomorrow, tomorrow will be my new goal for completion. Wish me success.