Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret….well, not really

If you’re of the same vintage as me you may remember this classic junior novel by the beloved, Judy Blume. In the story, Margaret is faced with the daunting task of completing a year-long project for her enthusiastic grade 6 teacher. As someone with no religious affiliation, Margaret undertakes to explore her spirituality by investigating religions in her community. Hoping for divine intervention, she struggles to find her way to some kind of spiritual clarity not to mention a final project for her teacher. Despite her efforts (and her learning), Margaret hands in a sorry one page letter in an attempt to demonstrate her findings…(sorry for the spoiler;)

I’m pretty sure my semester-long major digital project won’t end that bleakly but I sure could use some divine intervention!!

I’m 2/3rds of the way through a self-paced gamification MOOC and stalling…like ‘pull off the highway onto a side road, park the car and have a picnic’ kind of stalling! EEP!

The plan was to learn about how to engage my primary students through game-based learning (not necessarily the video variety), iPad technology, and other forms of play. I found a few appropriate MOOCs and got started hoping a MOOC would provide some structure and definition. I worked through the first two modules, blogged about my beginnings and carried on to module 3 & 4. I watched all the videos, took notes, did the ungraded homework (just check my notes, I dare ya!) , and completed the computer assessed quizzes. And with two modules to go, here I stall…

1. Is it the self-paced issue? (I need deadlines!)

2. Is it that the content is not moving in the direction I want to go quickly enough? (Lots of theory which I appreciate and a few concrete applications I can use but…not enough to combat #3)

3. Is it that as a teacher new to my primary grade position I have other more pressing needs? (like classroom management strategies, unit planning and resource creation…in spades! not to mention pursuing school-wide technology goals)

…I have also been preoccupied with reflecting on our rhizomatic learning chat, keeping up with everyone’s posts (I’m discovering I need to pick my battles here!), and wondering if I shouldn’t jump ship (“Man, over-MOOC!”) and develop a classroom blog instead to kill two birds with one stone so to speak!

And so, the picnic is done, metaphors sufficiently mixed and I’m back in the car still waiting for the way to become clear.

Perhaps I just need to have a little faith;)

 

Typically making things harder than they need to be,

Raelynn

*This ‘fluffy’ post is brought to you by yet another sleepless night!