It’s a Whole New World Out There

Welcome to my first Blog, ever. One would think that working in Communications and with a background in Advertising and Marketing I may have written a Blog previously, or at the very least, would follow a few. This is not the case. I completed my first degree (Bachelor of Business – Communications) almost twenty years ago and while I have always embraced technology and many forms of social media, I have shied away from Blogs.

I know I’m a multimodal learner, though I still love the feel of a newspaper in my hand, I like the platform of communication to be reliable (often keeping up with the news via the ABC Facebook page) and I need to understand the big picture. Blogs have always seemed a little flippant to me. This is undoubtedly the first of many challenges I will face throughout the year as I embrace change and learn to appreciate the different ways that we all learn and communicate.

I enjoyed Dr Judy Willis' presentation (which may be viewed here) and the readings on different learning theories, particularly Connectivism : A Learning Theory for the Digital Age.

As a marketer and someone who has worked in a number of large organisations, Connectivism made perfect sense to me. I also identified with many of the learning trends mentioned and as a parent of four young boys, every day I am faced with the evolution of learning whereby technology has replaced cognitive processing in many environments - Google has a lot to answer for! My eight year old son will soon surpass me with his technical savvy, if he hasn't already. But learning is a continual process and the exciting aspect of the Graduate Diploma of Learning and Teaching is that we are all here because we are willing to embrace that change.

I came away from my first week thinking that the most important lesson I will learn this year is that as a Primary School Teacher my greatest asset will not be my knowledge, but rather my ability to understand the learner and to impart knowledge so that it can be processed internally.

Let the unlearning begin!