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Topic 4- Design for online and blended learning
After that I have been a leader in the previous topic I found with this topic I was quiet confident to contribution to the group. I felt that I was contributing to the conversation as well as raising factors that I did not necessarily agree with when approaching the topic. This was a big change from Topic 1 where I was quiet apprehensive of contributing to the group. I could defiantly see a change in my confidence throughout the course. I am hoping when I facilitate the group that I keep the same confidence for the next intake of ONL192. This topic was quiet practical and I group approached this by looking at emotions. The group discussed how teachers and students emotions contribute to the learning environment. During the one webinar which made quiet an impression was a discussion about different emotions are evoked within individuals based on cultural background. For example due to being South African the ideas of race has quiet a big impression on me due to the fact that there is racial tension in some areas in South Africa. Other individuals within the group have not been exposed to this tension in their countries and therefore these emotions are not as strong. There is a British individual in our group and he raised that in work environments that he has been in they always feel weary when they introduce themselves as British because of History they were the most prominent colonizers and there is currently controversy of British people around Europe because if the legislation of BREXIT. I did resonate with this because even though I was born in South Africa my family is Portuguese and they also colonized around the world. Specifically, in South Africa there is racial tension due to land been given to the white monopoly and Government needs to equalize this in regards to the population. This has caused much racial tension in South Africa and this has evoked many emotions in all races within South Africa. In some cases I also feel weary of introducing myself and heritage due to these relevant issues in South Africa. I think that it was clever to deal with the scenario in this manner because as a online tutor you need to not only deliver content but you need to evoke emotions within your students because you do not have the face to face element. This can be very difficult to do in your virtual space because you need to as online tutor come up with different strategies to connect with your students. I must say that I am quiet enjoying the webinars now as I am engaging more the topics that are discussed the more interested I have become. I also think that because of the group dynamic we come from different countries as well as different perspective.
The one thing that I found a bit frustrating with this topic is that I had this new found confidence and the group could not decide on a platform to use for the presentation. The group had decided to create an infographic. I created a google form with a bunch of platforms that could assist the group with their current objectives. The group was instructed to vote on which platform they wanted to use. The following webinar which was a week later I presented the survey which the group unanimously decided that they wanted to use a platform called Gloggster. As we got to deciding which template we wanted to use the platform also had restrictions which was frustrating to me because once again we had to change our platform due to restrictions. The next time I have an opportunity to do this I will pick platforms that do not have restrictions but then this process becomes very restrictive to these platforms. I would like to have better access to different platforms in order to get the full benefits of Educational Technology throughout the course. The group decided to use a mind mapping platform called Coggle which we could all collaborate on. I hope for the next topic the group decides to do something completely different in presenting our knowledge. I am going to suggest to maybe incorporate some data of team members.