My final video and the story behind it...
LINK:A TALE OF TWO CEs -- MY FINAL VIDEO
As the deadline approached
for our Culminating Experience proposal, I was a little confounded about how to
approach the project. I had two ideas:
There were benefits and
drawbacks for both.
Idea 1 – Integrating Technology into Second Grade
Benefits included a need
for more study on tech in primary grades, access to a second grade classroom
and the ease of setting up the study – I could clearly see how to write the
proposal. The drawback was finding a way to get the time off work and do the
implementation of the study.
Idea 2 – Mental Health Interventions for Older
Adults with Cognitive Impairments: A Multi-Dimensional Curriculum
Benefits included a
community need for determining effective means of training service providers,
access to international experts and the convenience of being able to work on
the curriculum at any time. The drawback was that I couldn’t figure out how to
write the proposal – the project (as I had conceived it to that point) was
project-based and consisted solely of creating the curriculum. There was no
example of how to set up the proposal for a project structured in that way, and
every time I thought I understood what I was doing, I found myself unable to
even approach writing the proposal.
So I talked to my peers.
On different occasions, I talked to Liz, Robert, Dana and Olga about my indecision.
I also talked to Melissa, an iMet student in a different cohort. At some point,
they all said the same thing – that it sounded like I wanted to do the Older
Adult curriculum, but that I was hesitating to commit to it because of my
confusion.
I decided to wade in. It
took literally all day for each day of that weekend, but I found a way to write
up the proposal for the curriculum. It was flawed, but I did it. And in the
process, and upon receiving good advice from Dr. Jelinek, I distilled down my
idea. What I ended up proposing was this:
An Evaluative Research on the Efficacy of an
ELearning Instruction Module for Mental Health Interventions for Cognitive
Impairment in Older Adults
I will develop an
asynchronous online module based on the content of a webinar and then send that
module out to former participants of the webinar for their evaluation. I’m
going to triangulate that data with interviews with administrators and experts
in the field and with my own observations. What I hope to establish whether
this approach is a helpful resource for service providers or whether it would
be a waste of resources to dedicate time, energy and funds to developing such
modules.
I’m very happy to have
progressed through to this point.
However, the story doesn’t
quite stop there. When I first developed the storyboard for this assignment, I
basically created a report of my project. Yet again stumped by confusion, I
picked up the phone and called Liz at work. She reminded me of the real story
of my CE – that period of time when I was so frustrated and indecisive. “Do
that,” she suggested.
And so I have. “I get by
with a little help from my friends…” (Please imagine the dulcet tones of
Joe Cocker tailing off as the screen fades to black…)
