Ten years ago I joined 25 other pioneers in a grand experiment in online education. I was accepted into the first cadre of the Pepperdine Graduate School of Education and Psychology’s fully online Masters in Educational Technology (OMET) program. What seems so commonplace now was almost unheard of then.
In the past ten years, online classes have become mainstream, but I believe that the experience I had is still exemplary. It modeled community of practice, collaboration, communication, and constructivist pedagogy. We used primitive tools, but we really used them well!
The Pepperdine OMET program is this years recipient of the highest honor of the United States Distance Learning Association, the Platinum Award for Best Practices for Online Distance Learning Programming from a national field of entrants. It’s well deserved!
The education I got from this program gave me the vocabulary and the academic grounding that helped me put my vague thoughts about education into practice. The books I read, the lessons I learned, and the colleagues I met still impact what I do everyday. I owe any ability to articulate coherent thoughts about learning to this program.
If you are attending NECC in Atlanta this year, there will be celebration of this 10th anniversary of OMET and this well-deserved award. Hope you can join us there!
Sylvia
Sylvia,
My name is Anthony and I am the one Clay Burell wrote about in his blog that is suspending his Master’s study. I’ve had completed 9 credits of my Master’s work and had been feeling good about the information I was learning about. That was until we started talking about technology in the classroom and the instructor wanted me to do PowerPoint and Excel lesson plans. I understand that both of these tools have powerful uses, but this was not the type of technology I was paying to learn about. I’ve been using those tools for years now, and as powerful as those tools are, they are not the ones that are radically revolutionizing education today.
I will look into Pepperdine University’s online master’s program from your suggestion. If you have any additional suggestions for other online Master’s programs that provide more training and study of Web 2.0 tools, I would be greatly appreciative.
Best regards,
Anthony