Welcome

As this is my first post, I will introduce myself and what this blog will be about.

All About Me

I trained as a primary school teacher and worked in primary schools in Limerick, Ireland for the last six years. Last year, I decided to pursue my love for planning, resource making, and communication of complex topics, by applying for a Masters in Technical Communication and E-Learning in the University of Limerick. So here I am, one third of the way through the masters and starting a blog on my experience of e-learning and technical communication.

This semester promises a range of exciting challenges in the field of e-learning and technical communication:

– a virtual collaboration project (lots more on this to come)

– the creation of a digital resource

– the compilation of my e-portfolio

– an interview with a Tech-comm or e-learning professional

– a CCM project

– workshops on Dreamweaver, HTML, and Articulate.

Virtual Collaboration Project

I engaged in group work a lot in my undergraduate degree. I had a mix of negative experiences (groups too big, poor co-operation, unclear roles) and positive experiences (established a good working relationship, all team members giving an equal input). However, a virtual collaboration project is a whole new area for me. This project involves students from three different universities in three different countries (Ireland, France and the U.S.) collaborating on a project. My only previous experience of group work has been with people I was familiar with and we collaborated in person for the most part. I am looking forward to this assignment as I feel it is relevant to the work that I would expect to be involved in when I am qualified. It also gives me the opportunity to interact with students of the same subject from other countries.

There has been a lot of discussion about the best medium to communicate and collaborate with our team mates. I anticipate learning a lot through this process as I have already heard fellow students mention a number of tools with which I am unfamiliar, e.g., Slack, Trello, Base Camp.

If you have any other suggestions, or experience with these websites (either positive or negative), please comment below.