Week 6 -- wrap up -- choices

Reflect on what you have learned in the class and how you will use it professionally as both a lifelong learner and an instructional systems professional (or whatever field you’re in).

So many lessons, so little time.

In the end this, to me really is the take-home message. Life is ultimately about choices. From this class alone, I have acquired a long term commitment to two websites -- OSSA and emslastcall. I am the sole administrator of the emslastcall site and to successfully lauch, I will need to be quite visible and provide several models for sharing lessons learned. I am a mere contributor to OSSA, but am deeply committed to a successful forum and anticipate a substantial investment of time until it assumes a life of its own. My professional commitment to GWU entails commitment to a minimum of two online courses. As instructor, my contributions are significantly front loaded. So far, I have substantive commitments to four distinct forums. If that were not enough, I am a full time doctoral student. Each online course entails another site/forum/discussion board commitment. Another site to monitor, another forum to read and respond, and other discussion board commitment. I could have six extensive commitments online.

These are merely sites -- if you throw in Facebook, Twitter, Diigo, Twine -- there is more, much more to juggle in my collective web 2.0 persona.

I'd love to blog -- but my, oh, my -- what I'd really like to do is keep an online journal. This would have to be a personal , for my eyes only diary to be opened upon my death for my children. There are just so many different aspects to my life -- personal, professional, clinical, educational. There are love stories, work stories, past, present, future stories. There are the many occupational hats I wear -- clinical research practitioner, instructor/trainer, paramedic, student, social science researcher, mother, sister, daughter, friend... Who is the audience? What are the repercussions?

So, back to the original question -- I've learned, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167).

There is more, there is always more. More tools, more toys, more references, more information than I had dreamt of and perhaps more than I can ever master and employ effectively. There are certainly more opportunities than there is time.

In the end, it's all about choices -- what tools meet my needs and my current technological prowess, where I choose to spend my time, how my choices reflect my philosophy and finally what my priorities are. We all have the same number of hours in a day, days in a week and weeks in a year. What captures our attention and devours our time?

Choices. Choices.