Resolution and Finale

So the course has come to an end and my blog is seemingly complete. But is it really complete? In my limited experience of blogging over the last ten or so weeks I've found that creating and maintaining a blog can be an organic experience at times, but can also be frustrating and difficult to engage with. This is likely demonstrated in my posts over the weeks, where sometimes I have engaged with the technologies raised in the lecture and other times I have not been fully accepting of their uses in the classroom. My blog is one shaped on experience: I didn't want to post about anything I hadn't first tried myself and I feel this brings a genuine quality to a lot of what I've written. Every post based on technology I have tried to relate back to the fundamental basis of pedagogy and how to implement the technology into the classroom; the key here being integration, not exploitation. I tried to draw on some broader sources as I made my postings; however as I went along I found it more useful for myself to consider how I would use the technologies and in what context(s), as I found this would give me a better grounding if I try to use any of these new technologies later in my career.

The social aspect of my blog that I started with soon fell to the wayside as I found that my classmates were all using their blogs only for this course and I didn't want to move too far off-topic. Still, some postings relating to my life outside of university remain and I hope to keep using the blog for social purposes, adding in people from wider circles to have a look. It was definitely difficult knowing that my classmates would also be reading the blog and were free to make comments. This altogether helped to "smarten" my writing up and make sure I was posting something of relevance and/or interest.

Overall, I've found the blog a useful experience as a means of gathering my thoughts and exploring technologies I would have otherwise never heard of. My blog became a focal point for sharing these experiences of new technologies and for also really engaging with some of my classmates on issues I was truly concerned about. This offered a forum for these discussions that otherwise might never have come up in ordinary conversation. So for that I'm grateful and the blog shall remain as a monument to my thinking, knowledge, understandings and reactions to teaching and learning with new technologies.

Some points of resolution: Simon and I remain friends, despite our message-board meltdown; my trombone troubles still exist and I'm not sure what the cause is, but the short-term plan is rest and relaxation; Love Never Dies comes to Australia next year and I really like the soundtrack; Tinker the Voki character was retired after one posting here and one posting on the ESI blog; the ESI blog remains operational, have a look; Voki remains my favourite tool picked up in this course; I'm really happy I finally learnt how to hyperlink; I'm still waiting on that cease-and-desist letter from Facebook.

And because I want my blog to have a grand finale, here is the grand finale from a great film score: Independence Day by David Arnold.



The End.