Student reflection on Teaching with Tablets MOOC

‘This course has been a veritable 'Teacher's Centre' for me. Something I've missed since moving to an international context. I'm very impressed with the range of benefits and the way that the collaboration has worked. Meanwhile I've found new enthusiasms as a result of joining.

Learning on your own has never been very successful for me before. I can sit down and do an assignment but it's always hard to get stuck in. With Teaching with Tablets the fluid and flexible nature of this course has been a real transformation. Of course, this means that I've learned more about learning too. I'll be exploring how to take that to my colleagues and students.

It's been really interesting to find a medium that feels truly 21st Century and about as far removed from the Victorian classroom setting as I can get.

The mechanisms of the course have also been helpful. I had a Google+ account that I'd really never used. I'm keen on joined up thinking. I want to develop tools in different spheres. I was also able, and committed, to using my phone to participate as this is how I do everything. And it worked! (almost)

This was important to me because I think devices can be barriers to learning and interaction if they're not convenient. And to be able to participate during the day in lots of different settings was a great way for me to work. I don't respond well to coming home sitting at a desk and doing a three hour study session anymore. I prefer to graze and that's what I was able to do. I think the personalized access was a real benefit to me.’

Liz Jones, Teaching with Tablets https://www.thinglink.com/scene/771282009031966721

These points about the changing nature of learning in teacher education and the potential for technology to create timely, distributed and situated learning opportunities for teachers, are echoed by a reflection from one of our MOOC students on her learning. Liz states that the course has been ‘a veritable Teacher’s Centre’ and that the medium that feels ‘truly 21st Century’. Benefits have been the fluid and flexible nature of the course and its accessibility, which meant that she could engage at any time and place. Belonging to the MOOC community of practice meant that she could ‘join in’ and ‘apply to practice’ at the same time, blending talking and doing, or ‘participation and reification’, to use Wenger’s terms (2009). Liz’s reflection also shows the way in which online social learning blurs the boundaries between formal and informal learning.

References:

Wenger, E., White, N., & Smith, J. D. (2009). Digital habitats: Stewarding technology for communities. Portland, OR: CPSquare.