Blogs are weird but useful

ONL have been an eye opening for me, seeing different people from different cultured participating in the same activities. Even if we were all teachers, we still come from different placed and have different ideas about many things. We have written blog posts which was completely new for me and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It was hard to read everyone’s blog post but I have read as many as I had time to.

Writing my own blog posts felt “weird”. I have never written a blog post or shared any information about me life/work. This was something completely new. I have to say that I enjoyed writing a post after each topic to express my own feelings for that topic. We had to have references linked to our text supporting something in it. I did not like that part of writing your own blog. Why do I have to find someone else that thinks the same as I do?

I have enjoyed ONL more than I thought I would. I heard that it was a lot of work and it would take a lot of time to complete everything. I agree that it took a long time to complete everything. I was late with my blog post in almost every topic, but I still enjoyed the time I spent with my PBL group. We always had interesting discussions about the topic.

Even if I did not enjoy searching for articles, I found some interesting articles. Er et al (2009) write about blended learning and they suggested that there should be at least two types of learning to support most students’ needs. This is interesting because it is completely different from what I have been thinking. I have always felt that it should be either on-campus or off-campus. Alkali et al. (2004) stated that digital literacy requires the students to have more knowledge about different aspects than just the concept of the computer. This was again an interesting view. This is also completely different from what I have imagined in to be. I always thought that someone with knowledge of a computer would be able to use it. I never thought about, for example, the cultural and social aspect of the students. My PBL group gave me a lot of insight in these different areas and I can now understand why these authors wrote as they did.

I think this was a big part of ONL, learning something new from people doing the same thing as you do. I do not know if we are all teachers in ONL, but it felt like we were trying to achieve the same goals in the end. I have had a lot of fun during this time and this is my last blog post for ONL. I would like to thank everyone in my PBL group: Denise, Achref, Emina, Karin, Bianca and Anna for a wonderful time and great discussions during these last 12 weeks.

References

Alkali, Y. E., & Amichai-Hamburger, Y. (2004). Experiments in digital literacy. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 7(4), 421-429.

Er, E., Özden, M., & Arifoglu, A. (2009). A blended e-learning environment: A model proposition for integration of asynchronous and synchronous e-learning. International Journal Of Learning, 16(2), pp. 449-460.