Well the ECA finally left the building over a week ago!!! It has felt strange suddenly having nothing to study after 2 years. It was also strange not to be part of a learning community anymore. However those feelings didn't last too long. OU provided me with 18 (now 21) students for the final run of E124. It's lovely having a whole group of students who are experienced at studying with OU...hopefully no surprises! The course materials have all changed so that's given me some bedtime reading. As E124 is integrated into new course E100 there are one or tow training sessiosn to complete....think tomorrows telephone conference should iron out most of the kinks.Then I only went and got swine flu...still feel like death warmed up! I must say some thank you's to one or two people who have helped me with this MAODE.Firstly my brilliant hubby who took all my rantings on the chin when the damn internet crashed, went to work in unironed shirts and provided copiuos ampounts of chocolate and wine. My 3 fantastic kids who have practically brought themselves up these past 2 years and have done a better job than I could!! To Enda, my fab study buddy, who along with Clive and Rick cheered me on and on and on practically carrying me to the finish line. To all my MAODE peers over 4 courses....you are all brilliant. To my great OU tutors and the MAODE course team and to OU for paying for it all....huge thanks!!!!!
I can't believe this is the end of the MAODE and my last ECA. It's been two years but feels a lot less. It's not been easy but I've loved every minute of it. Studying at Masters level has been way better than studying at BSc level.So now the last hurdle has to be jumped! 6000 words by next Monday....yikes! I have actually started and I'm looking at Blogs and Elluminate. My activity (part C) will be related to blogs rather than elluminate which was my initial choice. This is because my learners would likely to be overwhelmed by elluminate but more likely to see that blogging can be related to their learning and practice.I think I've finally got my head around Part B (thanks Alan!!) and none of my recommendations will be high otherwise OU would likely to have already implemented them.Part D seems fairly straightforward.....until I actually start writing it of course! Initial feeling is there will always be a need for both individual and collaborative learning.As this is the last ECA I seem to be almost savouring it...there's no panic yet and I actually quite like the content. I am dreading no more study as I know I'm pretty addicted to it...so I've made sure I have lots to do to fill the void. Decorating son's bedroom, whole bunch of new E124 learners starting in October, arranging elluminate sessions for OU AL's in October, got a trip to Ontario at the end of October to look for a house, putting this house on the market, collecting and sending documents off to the Canadian High Commission by November..oh and Xmas shopping!!Not too sure what happens to this blog though once H800 finishes and do I still tweet as I won't have anything to contribute to elearning? No point in worrying about that now..... best get this ECA written!!!
Last week was a really bad week. TMA 04 was due in yesterday and its not like I've never done a TMA before but I really struggled with this one. I think I was a bit loath to start it as this is my last ever TMA...just an ECA to do and I've finished my MAODE!! So I think I was feeling a bit sad it was nearing the end. I've loved doing this Masters and have worked with some great people. Also I don't think joining Twitter helped me. I seemed to spend more time on there checking on how others were doing than I did on writing the damn TMA...its become an addiction! I struggled big time reading Mary Thorpes research paper.....I just couldn't make sense of the academic language no matter how many times I read it and when I was asked to sum up the intro as a requirement of the TMA I could have cried...hand on heart I'm still not 100% sure what the hell the paper was about! For me, as with the other TMA's in H800, there were just too many components. The TMA seemed to jump from one thing to another so just as I settled into writing Part A I had to jump to Part B and start all over again. I haven't experienced this in any of the other courses. In H808 there was a research piece and a reflective piece which enhanced each other so they worked well. So my last TMA has been the worst and not how I expected to round off MAODE. Just have to hope that the ECA is a better experience.
Well after convincing myself that my ECA was basically crap I have only gone and passed the H804......hurray!!!!!!!!I now have H808 and H804 under my belt and it feels great! I'm up to the ECA on H810 and sill complete that at the end of July. I've just signed up for H800 which will be my final MAODE course so I'm looking to complete the MA at the end of this year.....yikes!!
