ONL202 Reflections blog

Posts

- November 27, 2020

Designing for online and blended learning I write this blog form a little bit of an outsiders perspective, since I have not been teaching for the last couple of years, and have -thankfully- missed all the stress of the suden move to online teaching. I also write it as a way to remind my future self, when I am back to teaching hopefully next term, where I should put my efforts, since I believe that online and blended learning have arrived to stay. My imaginaries of online teaching were a little bit like the photo above. A tidy space with everything you need around you, including a warm cup of coffee and a lovely background to create some sort of cosiness for the students to feel warmly welcome to our homes. On the other hand, I imagined a group of students engaged with their computers, eager to try new online platforms and tools, more active in the class since the online space might mitigate fears of judgement and shyness. And specially, I imagined lots of open cameras showing student

- November 13, 2020

Learning communities and WIASN Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash The discussion about learning in communities in our ONL 202 group has been very enriching. I have learned lots and hope to apply those reflections on my teaching practice, including the great online tools available for brainstorming and producing collaborative outputs. We actually came up with a very handy list of tips for educators who want to apply collaborative and community learning activities, so I may suggest to take a look at the work of group 3 :) For this blog, however, I would like to reflect on what I thought was a support online network, rather a community of practice that has helped me to understand and navigate the academic world as an early career researcher and a latina woman. I am referring to a large Facebook group, called Women in Academia Support Network (WIASN). The group, with over 10.000 members, has become a safe space for finding support to navigate tricky job-academic related situations, an

- October 22, 2020

Sharing and Learning - topic 2 Photo by Karim MANJRA on Unsplash There are quite deep questions arising when discussing whether to open or not our courses or materials. Should science and knowledge owned by anyone? Should we, as teachers and content creators, claim exclusivity over the teaching material, or can it be used for other colleagues around the world even? What is the extent of our social responsibility as educators? These are of course questions that cannot be answered in a blog post, but I can share my reflections and learnings on this topic. Looking beyond our individual practices, it is a matter of social responsibility. Opening education can be a way to contribute to adress inequalities. Indeed, o pen education is encouraged by supranational organisations. The European Union and UNESCO, for example, have their guidelines and resources. However, there are certain distinction

A grumpy millennial

- October 08, 2020

"Confused" by Guudmorning! is licensed under CC BY 2.0 I always thought of myself as rather lucky to be part of the generation that grew with the digital transition. I assumed that learning and engaging with online platforms and digital tools was going to be ‘natural’ for me, while I was still able to value the benefits and simplicity of being offline. That, however, changed when the digital platforms and social media outgrew me faster than I could even realise. Suddenly I was an online illiterate! People around me were talking of Tik Toks, Snapchat, Twitter and who knows what other things for which I just don’t have the time or patience to learn. I had become a grumpy grown up that is overwhelmed by the online world (sigh). Entering this course was a bit scary because it seems to expect lots of online engagement outside the meetings and emails. Like, I never had a blog before, for a start. So, going through and leading this first topic on digital literacies helped me