Thing 23 – The End and 7 1/2 Habits Revisited

First of all, I want to thank my coach, Shelly Paul, for organizing and presenting this course and thus, all these wonderful tools and ideas for me to use. This is something I am going to use and hopefully expand on as time allows. I also look forward to an update/refresher class in the future.

As I reflect on what I have learned during these last 10 weeks, I tend to go back to the 1st assignment to talk about the 3 most important habits (for me) of “7 1/2 Habits of Life Long Learners” . At that time, I felt those habits most important to me were ;

No.2 : “Accept responsibility for your own Learning” – As I went deeper into the course, I found that I had to overcome my own initial frustrations at not being able to remember a particular format for getting an assignment completed. My first inclination (concerning computers) has always been to “call somebody” but through this course, I have been given the tools to solve just about any question and even experiment on my own. Even if I do have to “call someone” occasionally, I will know more about what to ask.

No. 4 : “Have Confidence as an effective learner” – I had designated this as my most challenging habit and I was correct. My confidence in “Learning how to Effectively Blog” did seem to present a challenge to me every time I opened up my edublog and started to write ” Thing…”. I have always been a firm believer in You don’t really feel confident that you have learned something until you begin to share it with another. “Blogging” is not always about trying to teach something, it is also about sharing plans,ideas,beliefs…etc. My Blogging assignments have given me that confidence and I intend to use it every chance I get.

No.7 : PLAY – This part was not difficult for me. I will have to say that I had sooooo much fun playing with all the new tools that I sometimes forgot that I had somewhat of a deadline to meet. I even think I stumbled on a simple way to lose some weight. There were a couple of times that I was so immersed in what I was doing that I forgot to eat lunch or even a snack and recently, when I weighed myself, I had lost 7 pounds.

I think that if I keep expanding and exploring from this point, I will really have gained some insight into the inevitable trend in education and how it is conducted in the future. We will all grasp the obviously good ideas and tools with gusto and crawl cautiously through the “Tripe” and we will, at the same time, train our students and our own children and grandchildren…etc. to do the same.

Thing 1 – Life Long Learning

Of the 7 1/2 Habits, the 3 that stand out the most for me are:

The most important – 2. Accept responsibility for your own learning ; As I stated before in my Voicethread; if I don’t accept responsibility, It won’t happen the way I think it should. I simply must be” hands on” about things that I learn. I can sit and listen all day and come away wondering what I heard but once I get in there and even make mistakes, it will begin to make sense to me.

The most challenging - 4. Have confidence as a competent, effective learner ; I might also add “blogger” . I know that I have really been a successful learner; I just have had to struggle with feeling confident in sharing what I have learned ( with the exception of music ). Putting my thoughts into words “with confidence” will be something I must work on constantly. I hope regular “Blogging ” will help me with this.

The easiest – 7 1/2. Play; I think most of everyone’s important learning experiences, that have stuck with them the most, have been those where they were under the impression that it was fun. I have always looked for opportunities to “play” with technology so I think I will actually have fun while I am “surfing” and “blogging” … etc.