Learning how to blog

Since this is my first attempt at blogging I am just trying to get used to the website. I can not figure out how but all of my postings only show up in the pages above, not on this home page. If you would like to see all of the other information that I have writen please select the links above: About, Links, Resources or Journal.

Doing this blog has got me really interested in blogging. As I am going away to China next week I have begun a blog about my travels. You can read up on my adventures at http://megstravels86.wordpress.com/. I will be on a plane in exactly one week from today heading to China. I will be at a University for two weeks of my trip and hope to learn about how they view adult education.

Thanks for reading and have a great summer.

Reflection on Web-Conference

Technology changes.. As this project is looking at the trends and roles of education it is important to keep in mind the changes in technology. We are lucky enough to live in a time where technology makes our lives so much easier. First off, this course is online, correspondence, where we have contact with our instructor as well as classmates through the use of technology. Even though I am from the ‘Y generation’ I am still getting used to come of the technologies out there. I am fairly new to skype but the though of it as well as the opportunities it opens up are endless.

I found that during our first meeting through skype we had some technical issues. It was very interesting though to meet, a person who I didn’t know before the first meeting in real-time video. It was very useful, for the short amount of time we had skype working, to be able to see the person I was talking to and to be able to read facial expressions and body language. We do have the capability of sending emails but then you could be waiting minutes to weeks to receive a reply.

Things like emails and forms are useful in the right situations but when you want to have a consistent discussion it is very helpful to have the person in real-time to be able to have a deeper discussion.

In our first attempt at skype we ended up having to end the call fairly quickly, as I said before, due to technical difficulty. We ended up just calling on the phone to have our discussion. It would have been very helpful to have the hands free skype experience so that we could have both been on our computers looking up information as we spoke. I know in my case I had to hold my cell phone on my shoulder when I wanted to use my computer so that I could still speak and listen.

The one thing that I learnt from this experience, and many other experiences with technology is that you can not rely 100% on it to work. Sometimes there can be technology difficulty as in issues with the hardware, software as well as with the user. One has to know how to use a program or be able to have the time to learn how to use it before it can become a useful tool.

As we are in the technology age I take it upon myself to consistently upgrade my education, with workshops, courses, webinars etc to keep myself up-to-date with the latest technology. I am hoping that our second attempt at skype will be more successful.