Moment of Genius

After the resource website assignment I was overwhelmed.  I thought there could never be enough time in a semester to check out all the interesting tools and resources that are being shared by my peers.  Then, I had a moment of genius.  What if I used my blog to talk about one tool per week?  That way I could kill two birds with one stone.  Duh, work smarter, not harder!

This week I'd like to review Khan Academy.  An Aunty of mine posted on Facebook that she was trying to help her son figure out Newton's Law.  I immediately thought, there must be something in the resource websites that can help her.  I stumbled across Khan Academy.  It is the perfect solution.  I sent her the link and she was very thankful.  I also discovered that they have SAT prep videos.  I do outreach work with high school students, many of them expressing interest in SAT prep material.  Trying to loan out one SAT prep book to 70+ students is a challenge.  By using Khan Academy, those with internet access can get more detailed instructions from the comfort of their home and don't have to stand in line for the limited number of resource books we have at the high school.  I have just scratched the surface, but I am sure there are tons of other great videos on the site.  I definitely give this site a thumbs up for visual learners who like material broken down in audio/visual format.

Learning from Peers

Echoed throughout many lectures, articles and discussions is the amount of learning that happens from our peers.  At the graduate level, instruction changes dramatically.  I remember my undergraduate years being primarily lecture based.  We rarely had group assignments and were often forced to memorize abstract concepts so we could regurgitate them in quizzes and tests.  This is no longer the case and I find myself much more excited about learning. 

In our last group assignment, we were asked to produce webpages.  I was assigned to the Red Team and our topic was synchronous tools for online learning.  The resources that we collected were plentiful and there were many that I was not exposed to prior to this project.  In fact, we had to focus on specific tools because we did not want the page to seem cluttered.  Quality, not quantity. 

Here is a link to our site:  http://sync-ed.weebly.com/ 

I learned a lot from my team and it seems each group project has been that way.  I enjoy learning from others and celebrating the unique contributions that each person brings to the table.  

Road Less Traveled

Life is full of choices.  In my current chaotic state where I am struggling to keep up with the roles of being a mother, wife, employee, volunteer, student and more  it is often tempting to take the easy way out.  Figuring where and when to cut corners is a hard decision to make.

There are so many new technologies that we are being exposed to, but at the same time there are some traditional methods that can be applied to achieve similar results.  Take presentations for example.  I am no expert on Powerpoint, but I have created quite a few in my lifetime and like to think that I am able to produce a decent presentation.  However, I was recently introduced to a new tool called Prezi.  So for my next group project that included a presentation, I had a choice to make.  Do I use the tool that I am familiar with and breeze through this assignment, or do I take some extra time to figure out this new tool that seems to be more fun and dynamic?

I chose the more difficult route and jumped on the Prezi bandwagon.  There was a bit of a learning curve and trying to navigate the features without a mouse was difficult, but I managed to survive and was quite impressed with the results.  In fact, it was so much fun, that within a couple weeks I had already started incorporating it into my work.  (This I enjoy because it's hard to impress our class full of techies, but take Prezi into the work setting and you are sure to drop jaws.)

The lesson learned from this experience brings me back to the infamous poem by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken.  The final lines state, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took the one less traveled by, and that had made all the difference."