Reflection of ECMP, the ultimate social learning experience

oooh ECMP, where do i start. this class has provided the most personal growth for me out of any other university class i have taken. being a first year student i am still getting used to the university environment and classes, then i get this class thrown in my face.

when the class began, and we found out it would indeed be an online class 3 times out of four, i was like SAWEEEEET i can lay in my bed and go to class! Buuuuuut then we started these weekly gatherings in the online world and i was little overwhelmed. I would lay in my bed and listen to Dean and guest speakers go on and on, and watch as the choppy screen sharing would flash across my screen, not having the slightest clue what they were even doing. For a while in this class everything went in one ear, then out the other. i knew i needed to work extra hard in this class if i wanted to gain anything from it.

i set up my blog and started to post tech tasks, and some personal stories. i enjoyed blogging and reading other peoples blogs, but i do NOT understand how people have time for all this! Like Robin for example! She stayed on top of every techtask, had a picture of the day EVERYDAY, and was an enthuastic active member of each online session. I idolize her for that! That must have taken sooo much dedication and hours infront of the computer. It was so helpful having people posting their techtasks as soon as they were finished so i had something to look at as i did mine. I really really liked that aspect of the class, that it truely was students teaching students, sure Dean gave us the assignments but when it came down to doing it, more help was given out BY students TO students through blogs. And there is no physical evidence of this in my ECMP experience, i would go onto someones blgo check out there tech task before doing mine, but i would rarely leave comments explaining i was doing this, which now that i think about it, i should have. I also got help from Robbie, not through blogs. He would always offer help when i didn't know how to do something and that was much appreciated.

In terms of the social learning in this class, i really enjoyed that so many of my classmates are Arts Ed students like me. This was refelcted in blogs, and i enjoyed looking at the "photos of the day" and the creative videos that people came up with. It was awesome to be able to post pictures on my blog and get constructive criticism, not just someone saying OH thats GOOD. I also read, more then once, "how can i apply this to an arts based class?" This question, more then once, popped into my head too. And it was interesting reading everyones take on it. I think that it will be definetly will be a challenge but I know that the people in this class are extremely creative, maybe too creative for their own good, and will be able to do it. We are entering age controlled, consumed, and constructed by comptures. It is up to us, the future teachers of this digital world, to teach children to use this technology in a constructive positive way. I found that ECMP touched on many ways to do this, from blogging, smartboards, second life, online gaming, to creating classroom videos. It occured to me that being creative in the arts is more then painting a nice picture