Portfolio Introduction |
Week 1 - 12 |
I often find Distance Education a challenge and working with strangers from various places around the world another challenge. Distance Education is a challenge for me, as I’m always short on time and never quite able to consistently contribute same amount of time weekly. Working with others is not quite a challenge but have its obstacles as timezones and different backgrounds always make things more complicated. It is actually quite ironic that I feel like so, because our MET program is completed completely online. That said, though ETEC 522 poses as a combination of both difficulties for me, the course ended with better results than I had expected.
End of Semester ReflectionThis course was interesting to me as it taught me how to look, evaluate, and critically think about Ventures in Education. Prior to the course, I already had a growing interest in starting my own business venture in education but it was always just an idea based only on what I wanted. My idea sprouted from my struggles as a user and educator for ESL teaching, and I had no training, no experience, no right education in anything business related and so I never knew where to begin. This course gave me a chance to look at the business aspects of my idea and see my venture idea in a different light.
A major portion of the course, gave the students a chance to perform jigsaw learning on each other for the opportunity forecast weeks, and I enjoyed it. However, in my opinion, for such a method to be done with an online community, I didn’t think it was as effective as it could have been. But nevertheless I learnt a lot, especially the topics we covered in the course. The mini-lessons each week for each topic helped me expand on my own idea and excited me even more as I was starting to be able to picture more about my venture than just one thought. I was like a new spider that had started to weave my webs around a bigger corner of a room, after practicing in the tiny corner for the longest time. If I had to give myself a mark out of 25 for my participation, I’d give myself 21. A couple points for the weeks I missed in posting and a couple for my lack of follow-ups postings even when I’ve read followed up on the works.
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My Postings
Week 1: Emerging Markets Polls Personalized Learning interests me in similar ways as you guys. But one question I would wonder about in terms of Personalized learning is whether the shift of preferences in learning environments from traditional to online classrooms would affect the quality of personalized learning. Because in traditional classrooms, the teacher can simultaneously adjust the student's learning to fit the student, but in online classrooms there will still be a lag time. So would a student who needs personalized learning, and chooses to do it online, be able to learn the material in similar pace as they would in a classroom? Or would this hinder the student's learning? I guess this would be what makes Personalized Learning challenging. http://etec522m.sites.olt.ubc.ca/2016/09/04/personalized-learning-2/ This week’s work introduced me to new markets that I never thought would be emerging markets. Week 2:Market Analysis http://etec522m.sites.olt.ubc.ca/2016/05/19/games-and-learning-market-analysis/ I am a big supporter for games and learning, and especially when both can be done in the same classroom setting. To me, this form of learning can occur in any subject. Learning can be fun, and best way to make it fun is through the use of games. It motivates the learners and ,most importantly, it gets the learners to learn without them realizing it. It's like a group of players playing Trivia Pursuit for the first few times, many don't know the answers to the questions but given enough time and opportunities, everyone will be able to recite all the answers. The website, Games and Learning, is a great portal for lots of information regarding the topic of games and learning. It provides the perspectives of the educator, the student learners, the developers and the researchers. This is a trending market and the site acts like a current events forum that provides updated news as they come out, providing information of what's out there, and what's in the makings. It's a great resource to have for anyone interested in the topic. This week, I got to apply what I learnt about our global market towards a market that interested me. Week 3: Pitch Pool - Pitch Critique PrintPass - http://etec522m.sites.olt.ubc.ca/2015/12/18/printpass-2/ This isn't a venture I would invest in if I was an EVA. The elevator pitch itself was too fast to really catch my interests. It overloaded my mind with too much information. The venture pitch was a bit better, but the product isn't sometimes that seems viable because smartphones now have this fingerprint option to lock and unlock phones already. Unlocking a phone is already a major part of connecting a person to all their user accounts. Having an app do this seems dangerous due to security reasons as the downloadable product also means easily hackable to me. So though the CEO presented the product well, I don't think it's something worth investing in. Wagyo - http://etec522m.sites.olt.ubc.ca/2015/09/23/waygo/ This is a venture that is worth investing if I was an EVA looking for an investment to put my money in. It targets a vastly growing group of users who will use this app at a cheap cost. Especially because this app doesn't require the user to input the text or speech in order to translate the material but just the image. The pitch was short but concise and included all the information that a potential investor would need in order to decide if it's worth a second look or not. It is not hard to predict that the software in this design will be bought over by a major competitor in the future, making this a good investment. This week, I continued to learn about EVAs and practiced what I learnt through pitch critiques. Week 4: Founders’ Parade My own founders’ critique http://etec522m.sites.olt.ubc.ca/2016/10/02/ixl-learning-paul-mishkin/ I enjoyed this activity as it gave me a chance to learn in a different backwards method. Similar to investigative photojournalism, I was investigating a venture that sparked my interests and that fuel my learning. (Links to my contributions for weeks 5-12 that were linkable) Week 5: Blended Learning https://sites.google.com/a/theharbourschool.edu.hk/522flippedblendedclassrooms2016/Responses https://sites.google.com/a/theharbourschool.edu.hk/522flippedblendedclassrooms2016/Responses/answer-request Week 6: Micro-Learning- http://etec522m.sites.olt.ubc.ca/2016/10/09/week-6-microlearning/ Week 7 - My own group’s presentation Week 9: Inforgraphics - http://thompsbw.wixsite.com/infographicsventure/activity-1-comments Week 10: Makerspaces- http://makerspace-etec522.weebly.com/public-makerspaces.html The eight weeks of opportunity forecasts aided in my understanding of what’s in the educational market, what ventures may work, and what may not. And most importantly, the eight weeks of jigsaw learning was an interesting online experience that I would consider bringing into my own classroom in the future. |