I guess that I'm fortunate that I came into education later in life, in my thirties in 2003. My graduate studies consisted of a combination of self-paced, independent study courses, online courses, two-week summer intensives, and weekly f2f evening courses. The first course I taught was a typical meet once a week f2f class. Given my background of a traditional undergrad and nontraditional grad training, I did my best to combine what I perceived as the best of both worlds. Organized chunks of new information presented in an interactive way, combining video, lecture, and class activities, with student derived presentations based on their interests pertaining to the topic - biology for non-scientists. I wasn't as prepared as I would have liked, I created an excel spreadsheet for grading calculations that was so big it almost crashed my computer and certainly didn't fit on my little 256k jump drive. My next set of courses that I taught were hybrid, a combination of an online environment and f2f interaction. I loved this environment, mainly for the gradebook and organization of course content.

In 2008 I switched schools and found myself facilitating hybrid courses with empty online shells. This offered an opportunity to start from scratch, but the basic gradebook structure needed to be created, as well as the entire course content and its organization. I followed best practices in progressive education and worked with the students to take course objectives from the syllabus and co-create course content. There was no time to think too far outside the box as I was overwhelmed with recreating the wheel every term.

In 2009 I began teaching in a fully online environment. I facilitated learning in a very structure learning platform, where the organization, gradebook, and content already existed and just needed facilitation. This took some time to get used to as I was no longer the content master. I wanted to find ways to add to the learning environment and maintain the integrity of the course. At first I became overly ambitious, adding articles and addition key concepts. I quickly realized that I wasn't enhancing the student experience, I was overwhelming my adult students.

The summer of 2009 I took nine Sloan-C courses. I was exposed to online learning best practices, time management techniques and tools, pedagogy, and engaging multimedia and technological tools. I immediately started using Jing for progress reports, added videos into my online learning environment to improve student use of the platform. I embedded youtube videos into discussion boards. I created assignments using social bookmarking, which greatly improved the organization of student research projects. I even toyed with a couple of Twitter assignments.

So, where am I on the static-dynamic spectrum? Though I will always refer to books and journals for foundational and current information, I now encourage my faculty to integrate dynamic tools into their classrooms. I'm in the midst of creating an advanced technology training course for faculty that will train faculty on the advanced uses of the learning platform and web 2.0/3.0 tools for improving the educational experience of our students.