QM: Gauging Your Technology Skills

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This winter I am working toward adding a new credential to my learning: Quality Matter's Teaching Online Certificate. This well-established and highly respected organization has put together a series of workshops that focuses on best practices of online teaching. I plan to reflect on each workshop as I complete them as a way to model metacognition. This post is 7 of 8.

When I scheduled my QM workshops I chose to take the Gauging Your Technology Skills workshop last. I was confident in my technology skills and thought it might be easier to end on a lighter note. For me, this was a great choice. In this workshop we took some skills self-evaluations to understand where our weaknesses were. While there were no areas of 'weakness,' there are always areas that need additional attention. In my case, that area would be using the internal analytics and features of the Learning Management Systems I use in my work and graduate courses: D2L, Canvas, and Blackboard. While I know how to create in each, I don't utilize some of the internal learner analytics and features such as online quizzes, creating groups, and other features. 

One of the best parts was having the opportunity to evaluate a technology tool. I chose to look closer at Google's Notebook LM artificial intelligence program. For my project, I created an audio "podcast" in which two AI-generated characters discussed a syllabus for my upcoming course! To say I 'created' it is misleading. To generate this, all I had to do was upload my syllabus and hit "audio overview."

After explaining my project and creating a step-by-step guide for those unfamiliar with Notebook LM we had the chance to evaluate our technology against an e-learning tools rubric that was designed in 2018. This is a great tool. Released under a Creative Commons license, it offers the ability for any of us who use technology tools to updated our own criteria.

Below are some of the resources featured in the workshop that can help you increase your technology skills. 

Computer Vocabulary Word List

Internet Glossary

7 Things You Should Do Before You Contact IT

Digital Learn

Related, a few years ago I created a crowdsourced document titled Internet 101 where educators could add and share resources related to technology skills. Please add to it!



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