Sunday, June 29, 2008

In retrospect

After leaving class on Thursday my sense of relief and satisfaction at the prospect of leaving on good terms was marred by a sort of nagging feeling. Although I feel i did my fair share of participation in the course I felt that my blog entries were few and far between and didn't fully reflect what I wanted to contribute to the class. So, yeah I felt insecure about my status in the course and my contribution so I thought to my self, "I'll run home blog my face off to show I care."

As I started to type out my massive blog and began to recap past readings and class discussions we have had I started to realize that I had already said these things in person, I had already stated my opinions verbally. I then thought back to the last discussion we had that night concerning online education and how there needed to exist a method of control in which the professor could better implement participation by cutting back on online distractions. I've mentioned before that I strongly believe that online education should and could not replace physical class discussion and while taking into consideration what professor Strate said in terms of thinking of blogs as position papers I came to the conclusion that I just don't function that way...

I wake up go to work, come home, read for class, thinking about the readings a bit as i'm brushing my teeth and go to bed. My routine just never got around to including blogging because I didn't think of it as though my blog postings were papers they were just conversations I was going to have to reiterate in class. As I thought all this while preparing my final all encompassing blog that was going to include everything that i had already discussed in terms of the readings i decided it was better to explain my inconsistency in this digital platform - I just got to distracted.

I was distracted by my daily routine, by my other course that I was taking, by the sheer influx of information i had to synthesize that basically felt easier to discuss in person that to compound into typed sentences, i was distracted by my computer!... with that said I better understand my limitations and I do apologize if it felt I wasn't contributing enough. I think it only fitting to end my final thoughts with this discussion because it fits so well into our debate concerning the future of education. Hopefully the students of the future can function with less structure than I can. But hopefully you guys got a sense of what my thoughts were (in class) and wish you all the best of luck!


ps. Thanks Dr. Strate
yamil

3 comments:

Lance Strate said...

I appreciate the perspective you've provided in this post, and sympathize with what you're saying. However, I would direct you to the second post on this blog, that is, the syllabus, and the section entitled Requirements where you'll find the following: 4. Postings on the class blog at least twice a week related to readings, class discussion, and analysis of digital environments. That is the bottom line.

yamil alvarado said...

Yes I agree. The requirements should be the bottom line. I just wanted to end the class discussion with insight into what I have learned not only about the course but about myself. It was a great course... thanks for reading!

mike's spot said...

Yammy- though your posts were few and far between, I enjoyed our moments sitting next to each other in person.