My Experiences With Online Learning

 

Experiences using an L.M.S

• As a Learner
  • As a learner I have used both blackboard and Sakai
  • I haven't used blackboard since I was in college in 2011-2013 so I can't overly remember much about it however I do remember that I did not use it to its fullest capabilities as it was the paramedic program that was completed in person at the time and nothing for it was done online
  • As for Sakai I had the opportunity to be using it more online this past school year and I did find it a bit confusing to navigate as there are several places to find the same information however I got all my assignment in on time so I guess I was able to navigate it...I was much more confident with all the different areas to look in by the end of the school year after having some time to look through it
  • I do think that because this was a new concept for most of my teachers that there was a learning curve and the sites could have been organized better/been more clean in order to navigate but I also believe that several of my teachers don't have the training behind them to be comfortable with the online learning environment 
• As a Teacher
  • While working through my placements at the DSBN I was using D2L in order to provide a blended experience and then with my last two weeks a fully online experience for the students
  • I will admit that as a Phys Ed teacher I was not using D2L for its fullest capabilities as there are quite a few hardships that I need to play around with in order to figure out the logistics of gym online but I did become quite comfortable to be able to navigate my way around the site by the end of my placements and found it to be quite user friendly once I understood the processes

How to include all learners?

• By providing expanding understandings of the LMS that we are already comfortable with or have had experiences with
• By showing us ways in which we can expand out abilities with the LMS we know
• Listening to the participants and providing answers that relate to and cause us to think critically about how we can improve our online classrooms