Activity 3.1 - personal & professional development objectives

What have I learned about my strengths and weaknesses?

Weaknesses?
On the whole I'm most vulnerable in a few key areas... researching new developments, issues and academic findings stands out as the most pressing one. When I think about it, I'm more of a "handson" learner .. and thus I tend to avoid it or at the very least only "do" it when something becomes topical enough that it requires learning more about it in formal ways. I'm not one to devote time to do it on a regular basis (and I'm now really curious how others address the same need for it) but the exercise of doing a detailed review of my job description made it pretty obvious that my current strategy won't be enough. I also realized the importance of promoting effective community building - something that I highly value and yet I haven't committed time and resources to learning more on how to effectively realize it in ages and certainly not much in the way of realizing it online.

It's now looking pretty obvious that in addressing these two shortcomings, my game as an Education Technology Specialist is raised .. and it should help feed the other "stronger cards in my hand".

Strengths?
I really wanted to avoid declaring myself an expert of anything. I'm not fond of the term because I don't consider it something that anyone should really be"annointing themselves with. Perhaps with the formal recognition of my peers on the same topic, I would feel more comfortable using the term.. but that hasn't happened anywhere often enough nor with much fanfare for me to do it. I've only learned since being hired how I have a reputation for making and using learning objects effectively. As a result, I managed to convince myself that perhaps I could be bold enough to apply the term "expert" for my effective use of technology / projects in teaching and learning. But only after carefully reviewing it and even still, I'm bound to be brown nosed by someone else out there. My grounds? A now 20 year period of relatively uninterrupted experience with and increased understandng of the use of technology in teaching and learning.

The matter of comparing myself with my peers brought up a number of other interesting problems and unearthed another set of issues. Our rather small department hardly gives me much of anyone to compare myself with and to go outside the University, I'd be hard pressed to know others of our ilke who I could meet to compare notes. Which raises the issue of professional "isolation" and the need to make a conscious effort to overcome this. Thus the only really viable option seems to be online communities. This theme is emerging more and more.

Reflection - professional isolation - confronting it

I've set to work today on addressing a few things that I've identified as being an issue a few days ago - most notable being "professional isolation".

Really became conscious of my own "professional isolation" again yesterday when I was at a conference (Google Sketchup - Dxb). Met some other eLearning practitioners in the process. One of them enquired about whether I knew anyone who could work as an elearning trainer. While I didn't have any luck in suggesting anyone to him, I did take the occasion to note the absence of opportunities to network with others in the area and how such querries were just the kind of thing that a network might help support / address. A few others also present at the time, concurred so I suggested that perhaps we should set up something online. We exchanged cards.

Today, as a follow up to that, I've been looking to find other online eLearning Professional communities to either learn what they've been doing to support one another or even joining them. So so many yet most of them seem based in any part of the world except here. Now I have to explore this further to see if in fact this is the case. However, it's pointing out the need to realize this here. I guess I'm envisioning an online community of elearning practitioners who are familiar with the issues that we address here in the Middle East.

Reflection - Activity 3.1. My strengths & weaknesses

What have I learned about my strengths and weaknesses?

Weaknesses?
On the whole I'm most vulnerable in a few key areas... researching new developments, issues and academic findings stands out as the most pressing one. When I think about it, I'm more of a "handson" learner .. and thus I tend to avoid it or at the very least only "do" it when something becomes topical enough that it requires learning more about it in formal ways. I'm not one to devote time to do it on a regular basis (and I'm now really curious how others address the same need for it) but the exercise of doing a detailed review of my job description made it pretty obvious that my current strategy won't be enough. I also realized the importance of promoting effective community building - something that I highly value and yet I haven't committed time and resources to learning more on how to effectively realize it in ages and certainly not much in the way of realizing it online.

It's now looking pretty obvious that in addressing these two shortcomings, my game as an Education Technology Specialist is raised .. and it should help feed the other "stronger cards in my hand".

Strengths?
I really wanted to avoid declaring myself an expert of anything. I'm not fond of the term because I don't consider it something that anyone should really be"annointing themselves with. Perhaps with the formal recognition of my peers on the same topic, I would feel more comfortable using the term.. but that hasn't happened anywhere often enough nor with much fanfare for me to do it. I've only learned since being hired how I have a reputation for making and using learning objects effectively. As a result, I managed to convince myself that perhaps I could be bold enough to apply the term "expert" for my effective use of technology / projects in teaching and learning. But only after carefully reviewing it and even still, I'm bound to be brown nosed by someone else out there. My grounds? A now 20 year period of relatively uninterrupted experience with and increased understandng of the use of technology in teaching and learning.

The matter of comparing myself with my peers brought up a number of other interesting problems and unearthed another set of issues. Our rather small department hardly gives me much of anyone to compare myself with and to go outside the University, I'd be hard pressed to know others of our ilke who I could meet to compare notes. Which raises the issue of professional "isolation" and the need to make a conscious effort to overcome this. Thus the only really viable option seems to be online communities. This theme is emerging more and more.