Another Summer!

This another summer semester for me in the Edtech program and hoping this will be my last. My goal is to graduate this fall semester. Being new to education as well as e-learning, it has been quite an eye-opening experience for me. I've been involved with training throughout my military career but it was mostly "this is your course, you're the instructor, now teach." When I would have questions on methodolgies or effectiveness, it was always "well, its this way because we've always done it that way." I found myself wanting to change the whole course to what I thought would be a more effective course which I'm not sure was very healthy for my students or my career.

Working throughout my Edtech online program, I have learned (sometimes the hard way) that two things have to be continual, both with the learner and the instructor. One being organization and the other time management. I'm (admittedly) not the most organized person when under tight deadlines and "life" is extremely busy. The program has and I hope this class will continue to force me to focus on and prioritize pending projects with things going on outside of class. I'm not using most of what I have learned within the Edtech program as of yet so I hope this class will allow me to continue to utilize my newly acquired skills learned in previous classes.

Time management has been another skill that I've been forced to relearn. I am a extremely good at multi-tasking different projects at once, but I have a tendency of getting focused on one aspect of a given project. I find myself getting up from the computer after spending 4 or 5 hours working on one part of the project and then realizing that other parts are needing to be completed - on time. One thing I have learned to combat this is to take more frequent breaks and "walking away" from the project for a while and that normally refocuses me on the whole project - not just one part of it.

I'm truly looking forward to this semester so that I can further practice and learn new skills for my new career. I look forward to working and getting to know the class as we move quickly through the material.