Week 5 Reflection on connections facilitating learning

Week 5 Application Reflection: Connections facilitating learning

Having networks has definitely added to my learning and allows for continued growth as we are in an ever-changing era with the advancements of technology occurring daily. Coming from a primarily traditional educational background, I was very comfortable working with classmates/schoolmates and using the school setting as a place to expand new contacts into friend and colleague circles. The daily face-to-face interaction tends to be a faster relation building environment. Moving into the non-traditional learning environment is a new experience for me. At this point, I find it to be an interesting and unpredictable dynamic. In my first course, I didn’t see major differences aside from not having the face-to-face interactions and the asynchronous flexibility to accommodate many schedules. Now in my second course, I am finding (what seems to be) limitations in addressing the needs of learners/students at different levels. In a classroom setting, an instructor can curtail the lesson to include those that are advanced without loosing those that are new to the concepts. I am not seeing this in this course. Keeping in mind that this is very early in the process, this is not a concrete determination, but merely an observation in review needing more to go on. But it is definitely something I would take into consideration in preparing to meet the needs of learners and designing curriculum.

The added attributes of networking is the opportunity to bounce thoughts and ideas off of others without having to wait to get to a classroom. Also, learning from others shared experiences that you have on hand to reflect upon and ask questions as they arise without limitations.

The digital tools that have assisted me thus far are the question and answer posting board, discussion post, the Walden library resources and Google alerts. I gain new knowledge through weekly discussions of readings and lessons, through researching further related topics and sharing discussions with others (colleagues, friends and family) for additional feedback.

My personal network supports the complexities of learning through dialogue and discussions on the posting board, blogs, and shared directly related experiences of one another. With the abundance of information available through varian sources, it can be overwhelming at times; but it helps to have a network to help decipher through the useful and most credible/reliable sources.