Specifically relating my learning to H800.
I guess, the thing about my learning on H800 is the journey that I typically take as a student in any discipline: first excitement; then bewilderment; then minor breakthroughs; more bewilderment; realisation that I know it all; realisation that I was wrong and i know nothing; finally feel like a 'groove' is developing just at the end of the course.
One thing that H800 has done for me is to (rip) open my eyes to the whole Web2.0 phenomena. I can see how this could be the 'genuine' disruptive technology that revolutionises educational practice. On the other hand I also see significant danger in being seduced by technology and not focussing on the content of the issues being taught.
I'm most excited about
I'm most excited about the personal learning environment that Web2.0 technology affords. Blogs, social tagging, rss feeds, micro-blogging & mobile devices are all fantastic ways of not just accessing but also publishing information. Modern computers and hand held devices are able to significantly make many of us able to publish more than just text, but also photos and videos, podcasts, videocasts etc.
The technology that has made the biggest change
Of the tech that I've encountered on H800, I guess it's this - the blog - that has made the most difference. The fact that it can be used to allow commentary and a (potentially) easy way to allow others to be updated on any posts (or comments to the posts) via RSS (or Atom) feeds. In a way blogs allows the ultimate freedom because it 'can' be made public, or it can be made so private that it can have an audience of none, bar the author, and all it takes is a few clicks. Try doing this with a text based journal. On the face of it blogs are nothing more than self-reflective journals. However, perhaps this self reflection via the power of friend/peer/public commentary is more than just 'self' reflective but allows multiple reflections to occur.
The technology(ies) that have frustrated the most
Moodle, specifically the way that OU has implemented it has been the technology that has irked me the msot on H800. The list is too long to go into at length, but many of the pages are non standards compliant (using WC3 validator) with the result that i have to use a minimum of 3 and sometimes 4 web browsers to access the H800 and other OU pages. See my post on my PLE. In addition the actual contents on the H800 course pages were infuriating to store offline in a sensible format. In the end I ended up printing out each module on paper. The use of the Open Office (really it's Microsoft Word - please let's call a spade a spade) as the standard for submitting TMA's and getting feedback totally does my nut in. Particularly when there is a perfectly acceptable standard that can be read (for free) called 'Acrobat'. Unfortunately to put commentary on a 'pdf' document requires a paid up version, or a commercial alternative (unless you work on a Mac in which case Preview does an acceptable job too) - the reader of such a marked up document (as in us) can still use the free 'Acrobat Reader'. I guess this is why OU has opted not to use this otherwise excellent technology. What I resent about Open Office (/MS Word) is that the output is not guaranteed to be the same as that which I produced at my end of the technology flow. I work hard at presentation (because I think it counts) but this is not possible in the world of Open Office which changes layout, page order, footnote formats, fonts, diagram location/size/orientation/opacity.
Which influenced my motivation
The result is despondency that this is all much harder than it needs to be. I have no idea how i would cope if I didn't have two screens that spanned my desktop so that i can have my different versions of the same type of software (currently I'm writing this with three browsers open and running). This makes me less than enthusiastic from time to time because my preferred 'MO' is to work smart and not hard.
I dealt with this by
The only way to deal with this has been to employ a myriad of software solutions. I justify the expense by thinking that the cost of this and other MAODE courses is so expensive that i cannot really afford to get the minimum out of the course because of (imho) poor design and implementation of the OU VLE and MAODE materials that forces me to work through (bah!) or around these obstacles.
Thank goodness that the content is superb, the tutor support has been great on both courses (different tutors) and the classmates have been interesting and engaged.