Second Elluminate Live session…

Last night we had the second Elluminate Live session, after we’ve been given an extension on our assignments. The purpose of the online discussion was to discuss feedback from the first assignment and to clarify any queries regarding the second assignment.

It became obvious to me fairly quickly, after listening to others and their experiences – as well as reflecting on my own – we do have this tendency to ‘confuse’ reflection with simply describing what was. I’ve certainly been guilty to that myself, ever since I started participating on this unit the concept of what is REAL reflection has become apparent, so if there is anything useful I got out of this unit, it would certainly be on the power of reflection and being honest with one’s own feelings and thoughts as the reflection process takes place – and record that as part of the reflection!

The discussion was very good, and really enjoyed the opportunity to participate – even though I struggled a bit with technology there at the start, but apart from that it was fine. I was glad to hear that the blog idea would be good as part of Assignment 2, so I’ve gone back and checked my spelling and things and that as well as check for evidence of ‘reflection’, which Kath will no doubt look for.

Preparing for Assignment 1…

Ok, so assignment 1 is due soon (in 4 days) and perhaps it’s time to put down some reflection on that process so far. To quote from the unit’s notes (so as to remind me of what this assignment is about):

“…This assessment will require you to be familiar with a range of strategies and software
applications that could be applied to your research. You will need to choose at least
four new strategies or ideas you haven’t used before, try them out and then evaluate
their usefulness to your research. You must choose at least one type of software
application and one organisational strategy (i.e. you must have a mixture of the two)…”.

Despite the fact that I’ve used and trialled all sorts of software and tool sand strategies out there, I have very rarely (if ever!) really sat down to think about it is that I like or dislike certain tools, and more importantly why. I wanted to make the theme for this assignment “EFFICIENCY” and so I picked software tools and strategies that I believed would help me improve on that. The next bit was to come up with the criteria for evaluation, which again centred on efficiency – so once I had that focus, it wasn’t that hard at all.

My choices for evaluation included: Master Documents in MS Word, MS OneNote, NVivo and EndNote integration, and the use of Covey’s Quadrant Matrix for prioritising tasks. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, OneNote is a software application that made a rather late debut in the planning process of this assignment, but one which I’m glad I tried again and included it as part of this assignment.

Overall, it has been a fairly straight forward process so far, once I got the criteria sorted out and methodically applied it to all my selected software and strategies for their evaluation. By the way, that criteria involves 4 attributes:

1. Quick learning process – was the learning process for this strategy relatively quick and easily accessible?
2. Ease in applicability – is the strategy or tool easily applied, or does it involve extra dedicated time, concentration and effort?
3. Overall perception of time saved – how did I perceive my time to have been spent learning and applying this strategy? Was it worth the time invested?
4. Transferability – how applicable is this strategy for a range of activities or situations?

---

The next bit, perhaps the hardest bit of all, is writing it all down in a systematic manner!! …and being the visual kind of person I tend to be, I felt that a single figure or illustration that would present the finding succinctly would also be very useful.  I came up with the concept of a matrix, colour coded for best presentation. I have it drawn up and ready to insert into the Assignment document, once I get to that section of the assignment.

Really not long to go now, so best to get the writing done. Thinking bits are done, now to write it.

Journey into journaling…

Part of what we’re asked to do for this unit, is to record our learning experiences as a journal or diary – perhaps more suited to write in the first person narrative form….so hard to do! I find it extremely hard, especially when my thinking can sometimes be way faster than my typing. But nonetheless, there are some positives to this style of writing – I feel there is a sense of freedom in that I can be myself through my written expression – I find this quite liberating, not sure exactly how, but my best guess is because in using “I” I can really just express what is on my mind without trying to find justifications, because these thoughts just ‘are’. Writing in the third person is certainly quite different, in that one is somewhat external to what is being said and so the need for having some evidence for what is being written about – not sure, but this is just my first thoughts on why I feel so much more liberated in the first person – there cannot be any right or wrong, because it just ‘is’.