Let’s Get It Started!
Hello colleagues, and welcome to the summer session with PSU LDT! I am happy to be here with you and look forward to our shared learning experience exploring the possibilities of wireless interactive learning devices (WILD) and how mobile technology can influence, facilitate, and enrich learning environments.
I am a community college instructor who firmly believes in the transformative power of learning. I began my pursuit of a M.Ed. in Learning Design and Technology in the fall of 2017. Despite significant health setbacks and a year away from the program, I returned last semester and am excited to be back. An academic at heart, I have enjoyed a career in education for over 20 years. Currently on leave from my position as a learning specialist, I continue to teach one course per semester within a hybrid learning environment I designed to maximize student success. While my health has deteriorated to the point where I may be forced to resign my larger responsibilities with the college, I maintain hope that I will continue to teach and to share my love of learning with students. LDT provides me the hope that I may continue to do what I love, even if the environment in which I do it changes. Technology has truly become my lifeline in facilitating learning to others and in encouraging my own growth as a professional.
In addition to being a mother, a partner, a friend, and a teacher, I am an avid reader, writer, and researcher. My current scholarly interests include resilience/grit, academic integrity, millennial learners, information and media literacy, and first-generation college students. I have been privileged to facilitate learning opportunities in academic, community, correctional, and affinity environments, and I embrace a growth mindset.
LDT505 is not a new course for me. I began this course in my first PSU semester back in 2017, but hospitalization forced me to take a medical withdrawal. Should you have any interest in examining my prior work in this course, you will find it in the earlier sections of this blog. As I firmly believe in forward progress, I have decided not to revisit those entries as we move through the course material together this semester. As I am constantly evolving as a learner, so too are my perspectives on LDT.
In examining the initial reading assignment for our LDT505 course, what resonates most with me is the notion of teacher as facilitator. This is a powerful and influential outlook that supports so much of what we strive to emulate in learner-centered constructivist environments.
“WILD allow teachers to take a conductor’s role. However, negotiating and directing students’ parallel contributions such that transformative learning conversations become the norm requires masterful conducting efforts.” (Pea and Maldonado, p. 437)
“WILD can give users a grasp of their own learning progress, self-monitoring their performance for the purpose of improving teaching … and learning.” (Pea and Maldonado, p. 437)
Pea and Moldonado identify these fundamental attributes of interactive mobile technology (WILD) that truly inform the foundations of this course, as well as raise ongoing contemporary issues regardless of specific learning environment:
- Affordability
- Portability
- Small Screen Size
- Computing Power
- Wireless Networking
- Multipurpose Applications
- Syncing/Backup Capabilities
- Touchscreen/Stylus Interface
As we move forward in our discovery of how mobile technology influences learning, these aspects exist in a ubiquitous fashion as we consider the enormous potential and limitless possibilities within the WILD.
Thank you for coming on this journey with me. … I hope you brought your charger!
References:
Pea, R. D. and Maldonado, H. (2006). WILD for learning: Interacting through new computing devices anytime, anywhere.
Thank you Crystal for the very inviting self introduction that you entered in your blog post. I also appreciate the words of wisdom you had in between paragraphs. They are very inspiring. I have also started this program almost the same time you did, but after a semester of a very rigid focus on this program, my job as the innovation officer of our family-owned training center needed a piece of my time and so I had to properly apportion my 24 hours.
I share your thoughts about WILD being a factor that fueled the shift of the teachers’ role from being the “sage on the stage” to being the “guide on the side.” I used to be a reflection of the “brick and mortar” education that characterized my generation. But I realized that the best way to deal with change is to be the change that we anticipate. And so I took the plunge and joined this generation of educators in the WILD – Workers for Increased Learning through Devices.
Thank you for sharing your post.
Ray
Crystal,
What a wonderful and inspiring “first” post! I have had to dig deeper than I ever have before to balance my role as a father, worker, and student and there have been days where I didn’t know if I could make it. Your post reminds me of how myopic I can be, especially when reading about someone overcoming some true adversity. I look forward to your perspective on this course, and how your views have evolved since then.
Reading Pea and Maldonado’s WILD article, I am astounded by how quickly mobile technology has evolved AND continues to evolve. Our own society is still playing catch up in how we treat smartphones and leverage them for “good”, while the youth are creating an online culture that fills ever so insular yet evergreen. I’m excited to be in this blogging group and to explore how we can pedagogically approach this organism we call mobile technology and learning!