Reflections

Well now that I've had to make an entirely new blog on a completely different website due to my old blog site (blog.ca) showing that's it's malicious and may download trojans; now I can finish my reflections and submit my blog. Thank goodness!
The three reflections that I am going to address are as follows:

1. What new insights have I gained in terms of the variety of roles that adult educators play?
2. What are some trends in my field and how am I going to prepare to address them?
3. Reflect on the web-conference experience with my learning partner; how it was and what was one thing that I learned?

I think the biggest insight that i've gained while reading and researching roles that educators play has been how educators need to mold their lesson plans to integrate self actualization by the learners, as well as how to make the subject relate-able to that learner.  Adult learners are more apt to learn if they can relate the content to their own life experiences.  Not only do educators need to be able to deliver their content but also be able to open discussion and drive that discussion where it needs to flow.  Educators also need to be crafty for lack of a better word.  What I mean by this is that they need to be creative in how they lay out their lesson plans to make it interesting, relate-able and thought provoking.  Gone are the days of standing in front of a class lecturing.  Self discovery learning is the way of the present and future when adult learners are involved.

Some of the trends within my field of work would be that more assessment type materials are being provided online. We use assessments for a number of different reasons.  It could be for career decision making tools, to assessing essential skills for funding applications to assessments to determine if someone has the right skills to be successful in their new selected field or training.  Many of my clients don't have a very high level of computer skills so this is a barrier to this trend.  How i'm having to address this is by spending more time with my clients to take them thru the assessments and by providing basic computer skills training.

My web-conference experience was short lived unfortunately.  My learning partner and I only got as far as introducing each other via email.  Due to my lack of answering back in a timely manner and her own computer and life issues, unfortunately she was provided another learning partner.  I have not been given another partner yet, so my web-conferencing experience is still hopefully to come.  Once this happens I'll for sure be updating my post here to fill in the blanks.