Welcome to Week 3

Good morning everyone!

Welcome to Week #3 of LRNT 521. We are off to a fantastic start—It looks like almost everyone has competed at least one blog post and I am thrilled to see the level of engagement and thoughtful discourse. There have already been some wonderfully insightful thoughts posted and I look forward to reading and engaging more with you on these ideas in the coming week. If you have not yet had the chance, please take some time to review and comment on posts from your classmates – there are some really great ideas being shared. If any challenges persist in getting your blogs up and running please let me know so I can connect you with appropriate supports.

Starting today, we are moving into the second week of Unit 2 in LRNT 521 which continues to focus on Digital Identity and Presence. I am hoping that as we enter week 3 of our course that you are starting to feel like you are getting your bearings and are beginning to find a bit of a rhythm as you navigate the balance of work, life, and school. I understand this challenge well, having spent many years juggling the roles of FT employee, parent, partner, and grad student. That balance is a constantly negotiated work in progress and it is very common at this point to feel slightly overwhelmed with it all or to feel like a bit of an imposter when it comes to academic writing or have gradschoolitis (see below regarding our RRU library message on this topic).

I read a quote (attributed to Dale Carnegie) some years ago that has always been helpful to me when I am not sure if I can accomplish a task or if I find that I am procrastinating due to lack of confidence:

Gradschoolitis video for new graduate students

The Gradschoolitis video (6:50 min; see also Gradschoolitis Notes for the transcript) is a pep talk for new graduate students that addresses the typical anxieties caused by the imposter syndrome. The video and the transcript are also posted on the Writing Centre’s homepage.

Are you feeling anxious about academic reading and/or writing?

Please visit Anxiety About Reading and/or Anxiety About Academic Writing for information and resources.

This week:

In the spirit of taking it one week at a time, this week you should be continuing to work your way through the following:

• the Unit 2 readings
  • In terms of reading content, just a comment about the optional reading: the Jenkins reading (optional) does a nice job of expanding upon the participatory culture topic that is also mentioned by in the reading Hargittai, E., & Walejko, G. (2008). Being able to understand multiple perspectives and deeper views on this concept is important as you consider this topic area. So, while you may not read the Jenkins article all in one sitting, it is worth working your way through over time. 
• completing Unit 2 Activity 1 creating your WP blog. I know that many of you have already made tremendous progress on this task. If you are experiencing any challenges—academic or technical—please let me know so I can assist with any support you may need.
• completing Activity 2, which invites you to map your use of digital technologies as it pertains to the resident-visitor typology and share this map on your blog. 
  • The discussion that is taking place through the blog comments and Moodle Forum is wonderful! Don’t panic if you have not yet dipped into it, there is not an expectation that you will reply to every blog post). Take it a little at a time, choose ones that you can contribute to and/or extend the conversation and add in your comments. I also wanted to remind you about the Feedly aggregator. It will help you consolidate everyone’s blogs so that you can scan them and see where the conversations are happening. In addition, you can always see the posts from student blogs on our course site under Blogs, Student posts but Feedly does a nice job of putting it all in one scrolling space so it is something to consider. Ken Jeffery’s session from the MALAT virtual symposium can help you get started with Feedly.
• As you turn your focus to Unit 2 Activity 3 this week, just a reminder that it is the beginning of Assignment 1 in our course, which runs over the length of the course and has the final deliverable due at the end of our time together. However, embedded in Activity 3 are some tasks (Item 3 – the plan and Item 4 – peer feedback on the plan) that are to be done over the course of Unit 2.
  • Providing peer feedback can always be a daunting task but I find if you approach it with good, open questions and through the mindset of improvement it can help frame your feedback in a constructive manner. There are a few resources on the RRU library site that may be helpful as you move forward – specifically reviewing other people’s writing; five steps to giving feedback on writing. Page 41 in the Taking Making into Classrooms Toolkit has a nice section of open, clarifying, probing, option, action and block question stems that you may find useful as well.

Reading Strategies:

A quick note on reading - take your time to read/think through them and the implications of those ideas in your setting. Getting back into reading in this way may take time so be gentle on yourself – find a time of day/flow in your day that works for you to read, focus, and concentrate on a reading and take it from there. Don’t forget to keep a journal/notes on the readings, their key points for you and the citation so it is easy to find later when you need it. The citations managers (i.e., Mendeley and Zotero) mentioned below may help with that. Once you learn how powerful these tools can be, I suspect that you will never go back to manual citation management. 😉

There are a variety of reading strategies that you may find helpful as you move forward in the program. Scan reading to get the essence of the piece and then returning to do a deeper dive are common, as is the need to establish a system that works for you to track the citation, the key points in the work and your thinking around those key points. There are a few videos on the MALAT playlist  (YouTube) that might be useful including this one. Some folks use a spreadsheet, others use citations managers like Mendeley or Zotero (see Citations Managers from RRU library for more information). The important part is that you develop a system that works for you.

Okay, I think that is about it from my end for now. Have a great day and I am looking forward to connecting with you at our synchronous session this week on Tue, Apr 21 at 5:30 pm PT. I have a brief presentation on learning and technology that I hope will be helpful in setting the stage for the rest of our course, but we will devote much of this session to debriefing the course activities and learnings thus far, as well as setting up for Unit 3—especially the Assignment #2 Debate. This session usually takes about 90 minutes, but it will be recorded so don’t worry if the time does not fit into your schedule.

As always, please feel free to connect with me directly should any questions or challenges arise.

Best,

Russ