Personal Learning Environments for Inquiry in K12 Week 1 #plek12

Always late to the party, I am weeks behind in posting my assignments. Never mind, I am really trying to commit to something for myself. I am taking the MOOC Massively Open Online Course, Personal Learning Environments for Inquiry K12 from the University of Florida. It's taught by Wendy Drexler and Christopher Sessums.

I have been in a high school one to one laptop environment for eight years. In the last three years, things have really ramped up. Technology really is ubiquitous in our district. We have also been working on rewriting our beliefs, and it's clear that everyone understands that we are committed to Digital Age Learning. We understand that as learners, we must all create, communicate, connect and collaborate. We are focusing on better ways of teaching and learning. I guess we are really trying "New Things in New Ways".

The questions for the course are:

1) What are your learning goals for this course?

• I have never learned well online. I really need practice at writing and learning in this environment. If we expect students to participate in online learning, then I feel I want to have the same experience.
• Practice writing and blogging. I just don't reflect enough.
• I would like to look at this as a model for our school professional development. For as long as we have had technology and for the amount of reflection we do in our practice, it's very difficult to push others to see the value of blogging and sharing online, particularly among colleagues.

2) In what ways are you hoping to connect what you learn here with your own practice?

• Experience being part of an online course. I work in a high school. We offer a three credit course each year. We have always had an online component, but now we are thinking about making the entire course online in the summer.
• We are very lucky to have a great deal of professional development built in to our schedule. We each do a yearly portfolio based around the collaborative inquiry model. I would like to be able to give teachers more online options.
• Model for teachers what Open online learning is all about.
• My two colleagues and I already use an inquiry type model for working with teachers on learning technology skills. They must design something that has purpose for their students. I am anxious to learn more about the inquiry process, especially online.

Week 1 Class Page