EDMS 550: To love or not to love...that is the question.

EDMS 550:
This class was, in general, terrific...and I didn't enter the course believing that this would be the case; I had heard horror stories from students with a different instructor. I do think that much of what made the course great was shaped by our instructor's approach and choices. Every time we met, I felt like we were introduced to new technology, encouraged to discuss and ask questions and share, and steered away from unnecessary or obsolete work whenever possible. I work in a technology-rich environment and would describe myself as "on the sunny side but not on the skinny part of the sunny side of the bell curve" in terms of technology comfort and classroom use. Still, I did not feel patronized to, I did not feel bored, and I did not feel overwhelmed. As a Mac user, I also really appreciated the extent to which Sir Michael Becksfort (yes, I just knighted you temporarily, if you're reading this) nobly worked to help me find, learn about, and employ applications that would be the most useful for me personally, although Xavier, Mariemont, and most of my classmates are PC-oriented. I can tell from other posters that we all shared this same general feeling: we appreciated the relaxed atmosphere, we learned a lot, and we felt personally served and enriched -- differentiated instruction: so fashionable, so pedagogically sound!

The only downside of the course was the redundancy of the blog and portfolio. I don't have a great solution and I don't mind per se. Our professional lives are not always efficient. If I had to choose, I would choose the blog format, especially given that I am not on Xavier's campus regularly outside of class and it's not easy for me to get there and work freely. Editing my portfolio requires that I be there, of course. There's a certain amount of hassle in the Mac-PC conversion that portfolio documents require, and that's obviously a further annoyance. I can blog from my own computer, whenever and wherever I have access, which is clearly preferable. I don't particularly know the solution to this problem, in that the portfolio is required by Xavier as part of our licensure (still murky to me, but I am pursuing licensure, so I suppose I should both care and become more fully informed) and the blogging is more comfortable but also less controlled so perhaps not a great idea for all learners. What to do, what to do....

That said, I probably should have made that second paragraph shorter because its length suggests that I had real issues with this course, and I didn't. It has proven immediately relevant for me, it will continue to be helpful, and I enjoyed the course, my classmates, and the instructor's chipper company (can temporarily knighted people be chipper?) immensely.