Digital Internship
Note: I found this archived post from Sept 20/07. Reading over it again tweaks my brain. I still agree with what I wrote. I get a sense of my own growth and learning over the past couple months by looking back at posts like these. My current notes are in green.
Today and tomorrow I am participating in seminars for our Digital Internship Project. I think this is a great opportunity professional development opportunity for new interns. We are a group of 34 interns and a handful of faculty advisor’s collaborating to find and implement new strategies for learning. Please visit our network to follow along with hot topics through the forum, individual blog reflections and videos that we are watching.
The fact is that current teachers are generally not well versed with how to use technology in the classroom, but we will be. We will hit the ground running. Technology, specifically web 2.0 tools, are becoming an increasingly important component of education. Students are online, they are interested in learning through the screen. This engages them and promotes life long learning. I stand by this entire paragraph, I have spoken to my peers in education and other faculties and none feel as though they have enough preparation in regards to how they can use technology for their own development. In fact I find that most neglect their life long learning and only do whats needed to secure a % grade.
We all have issues… there is always hoops to jump through, have to find solutions if we really believe in it.
I am trying to move from the idea that we are “jumping hoops” toward the concept of “working through struggles.” Every situation has them, the difference is in how one works through them.
Alec Couros stated “It is like a life change in technology, it all seems very complicated until you get started and you slowly develop.”
Alec sums up my learning experience over the past 7 months. I am very comfortable now sharing the tools that I us. By taking risks I have found many rewards and continue to develop further.
Reminds me of Clarence Fisher’s advice that the secret to success is to “Let it be organic, don’t force it, let it grow. Pick one thing and become an expert. If it’s blogging then blog and blog well, then move on to new tools.”
I often bring this lesson up when I am speaking to people about bringing technology into their lives. I am guilty of spreading a net too large. I tend to start many projects without really finalizing as much as I would like. As a digital intern I tried to become an expert teacher of technology and facilitator of learning. With my classroom I developed a blogging style that opened learning up and directed students to explore and utilize the web. It was a good start.
For my professional development I have really focused on being a leech that feeds on information from my ever building my network. I have come to better understand my learning. Part of me wishes I blogged more frequently, but I get myself busy surfing & reading, twittering and del.icio.us’ing . My goals for the New Year are to become more active creating and commenting. To collaborate and to develop new material, to trial and to error.
