Beginning Reflection

What do I hope to accomplish in this course?

Over the past few years I have been working in a school where digital technology is highly valued to the point where parents are investing large sums of money in their child’s education by purchasing a device for them to use at school. The expectations our school has on teachers to provide students with a sound blended learning programme has led me on a search for current pedagogical knowledge and educational design methods through a digital technology lens. 
I have chosen the Digital Education and Design for Learning paper because it seems to delve deep into contemporary practice with a strong practical element of designing educational materials for a range of learners. I am a digital learning leader at my school and so a lot of teachers look to me for ideas and ‘know how’ with using digital technologies in the classroom. With this in mind, I find it really important that I learn about the best practice in current design with an educational lense. 
Many teachers in my school are not confident with using technology themselves, but are having to learn hard and fast to meet school expectations. There has been a lot of practical professional development provided to us over the past few years. This PLD has been provided through volunteer teachers from other schools who are willing to share the resources and ideas they have tried in their classrooms. I have personally found this helpful, but continuing to add to my shallow bucket of knowledge. I find technology fairly easy to use, so I can only imagine how difficult all of these ‘new ideas’ and ‘things to try’ must be for the less technologically capable of us.  
My experience in design is very surface as I haven’t had a lot of professional development in this area. I have designed basic learning sites as a base for students to access their learning; as well as other activities for learning using google apps. All of these resources have been designed with reference to looking at what other people have done, ideas people have shared and trying to think of the best way for my students to use digital technology to meet learning outcomes; with no learning theories or design methods to inform it.  
I really look forward to learning more about contemporary learning theories, design methods and how this learning can be used to create educational materials that will support both my colleagues and students alike.

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