Diana Degan, BAA, ABC, CAAP Professor, Conestoga Public Relations & Marketing Ontario Extend Empowered Educator
This Faculty Story is a guest post written by Diana Degan, BAA, ABC, CAAP, Professor, Public Relations & Marketing and an Ontario Extend Empowered Educator.View the original post on her professional blog.
I did it! I worked my way through all six of the Ontario Extend modules and was rewarded with the status of an Empowered Educator. Whoo hoo!
That means I have received a badge for each of the six modules and one special final badge for the Empowered Educator designation.
It’s kind of like being in Brownies or Girl Guides all over again and working on those activities so you could get that badge that you could sew onto your sash. Only this time you get to download paper badges that you can print out onto a certificate or stickers you can put on your laptop.
This journey started with the Technologist Module that our wonderful Educational Technology Officer, Jesslyn Wilkinson, in the Teaching & Learning department at Conestoga College invited us to participate in. It was a great way to jump in. A group of us started together back in mid-June and supported each other through the activities over the two week time frame that had been set for the learning experience.
After successfully gaining my first badge, and checking out the rest of the modules at https://extend.ecampusontario.ca/, I decided that I was going to continue my quest and go after the other five badges:
Teacher for Learning,
Curator,
Collaborator,
Experimenter, and
Scholar.
Each of them focused on a specific area and required different activities to be completed. I discussed several of the challenges in posts here. All of them made me stop and think and taught me new ways to be better at what I am doing, both as a professor and professionally.
In the program’s description, to have achieved Empowered Educator status, recipients have
increased their capacity to create learner-centered technology-enabled and online learning experiences. They are empowered educators who have explored a range of emerging technologies and pedagogical practices for effective online and technology-enabled teaching and learning. They have explored the skills, knowledge, and attributes required to extend and transform their teaching and learning practices and to enrich their professional development.
Wow, it almost makes it sound like I know what I’m doing! Wink, wink!
I am very proud and excited to be counted among those that achieved Empowered Educator status.
