Two weeks down, three to go... Time is flying!
This was an interesting week because I worked as part of a team and we put together activities to show students the importance of communication, in an online class. The experience of working together virtually (synchronously and asynchronously) was very interesting. I was amazed how much we could get done by meeting in Elluminate, working on our own, then touching base to discuss problems. It was truly a team effort and a great first experience working with virtual partners.
For my portion of the project, I had our classmates create a communication policy to use in their online classes. I was truly surprised by how many people chose to use "the old standby," email, as their primary means of communicating. A few offered virtual office hours and one student was available via text messaging, a brave soul. I envision myself being available, as much as possible, but I'm very interested to read the research paper about text messaging, it seems a little intimidating to me. In this answer me now, technological world, I'm really surprised no one volunteered to use Facebook or any other social networking site! I tried to offer feedback that would be constructive and lead to new thoughts about improving their policy.
Whitney's project on accessibility for students' with disabilities was an eye opening experience. As a high school classroom teacher, if I run into any problems, I simply hand it off to the "special ed" teacher and let them deal with it. I now realize this is not a real option for college instructor and they must develop their own set of tools to deal with different situations.
I am looking forward to this week's project on direct instruction, I want to see what kind of feedback my planned activity will receive.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
1 Week Down... 4 To Go!!!
Alright, so to be quite honest I only created this blog to help document my participation in ITEC 67444, Teaching and Learning Online, at Kent State University.
Week 1 was very busy, but thought provoking. This being my 1st online course, there were many issues that I had not considered, from both the student and instructor points of view.
First from the student point of view:
Being able to fully utilize the technology available can make or break you. KSU utilizes FTP servers so students can upload documents to be shared with the instructor and their classmates. Having spent hours creating a narrated tour in Google Earth, I was ready to share my life, but there was a problem... I could not upload my file and therefore could not get a link to show off all of my hard work. No matter how many times I watched the tutorial videos or searched the Support Topics, I could not get the file off of my computer onto the server to share with others. At my wit's end, I resorted to calling the KSU Help Desk (mind you this is the equivalent of actually stopping to ask for directions) only to be told that they would resolve my problem in 24-48 BUSINESS hours. Mind you, 48 business hours could be 6 days (24%) of not being able to fully participate in a 5 week course.
I made an end around and posted the tour to my KSU Google Docs account, my classmates watched and responded, I was relieved for the moment. But my instructor had an assignment due the first week, requiring us to use the KSU FTP servers. After three agonizing business days, I received an email from the KSU Help Desk that my account had been created. First thought: Relief! Second Thought: I've paid you over $2500 dollars for the privilege to take a couple of classes and you didn't even bother to create my account? After all of the frustration and nail biting, I guess it worked itself out.
It was nice to see some of my classmates' brief tours of the places their lives have taken them. It was refreshing to see that I wasn't the only one who had moved around a few times, only to return back "home."
I have mixed feelings about the Jilligan's Island activity. It was well conceived and a good activity, but I think it would have fit better in a semester long course. From talking to others in the class, we felt like it was one more thing to do and did not have the time to devote to it that it deserved. I'm sorry for the guys that designed it, they were probably short changed by a lot of people in the class.
From the instructor-to-be point of view:
How is there enough hours in the day to do it all? This week's discussions on Social Presence, Adapting Traditional Activities, and the activity "Jilligan's Island" were thought provoking but very time intensive. Just trying to keep my head above water, as a student, was hard enough but trying to keep on top of all of the topics, read hundreds of discussion thread, all the while being bombarded by student questions seems like an impossible task.
I guess I'll get a small taste of the multi-tasking needed, this week, as my group is leading a discussion on Communication for online courses.
Following the discussion on Social Presence has been an eye opening experience. With six years as a classroom teacher, establishing a social presence has come easy. Being in close proximity to the students has allowed my to share my life with them and become a part of their lives, I really never considered that it would be more difficult to establish the same type of relationship only meeting students online. There were some really good tools and strategies shared and pointed out in the texts.
One week down, four more to go... I'm anxious to see what this week brings.
Week 1 was very busy, but thought provoking. This being my 1st online course, there were many issues that I had not considered, from both the student and instructor points of view.
First from the student point of view:
Being able to fully utilize the technology available can make or break you. KSU utilizes FTP servers so students can upload documents to be shared with the instructor and their classmates. Having spent hours creating a narrated tour in Google Earth, I was ready to share my life, but there was a problem... I could not upload my file and therefore could not get a link to show off all of my hard work. No matter how many times I watched the tutorial videos or searched the Support Topics, I could not get the file off of my computer onto the server to share with others. At my wit's end, I resorted to calling the KSU Help Desk (mind you this is the equivalent of actually stopping to ask for directions) only to be told that they would resolve my problem in 24-48 BUSINESS hours. Mind you, 48 business hours could be 6 days (24%) of not being able to fully participate in a 5 week course.
I made an end around and posted the tour to my KSU Google Docs account, my classmates watched and responded, I was relieved for the moment. But my instructor had an assignment due the first week, requiring us to use the KSU FTP servers. After three agonizing business days, I received an email from the KSU Help Desk that my account had been created. First thought: Relief! Second Thought: I've paid you over $2500 dollars for the privilege to take a couple of classes and you didn't even bother to create my account? After all of the frustration and nail biting, I guess it worked itself out.
It was nice to see some of my classmates' brief tours of the places their lives have taken them. It was refreshing to see that I wasn't the only one who had moved around a few times, only to return back "home."
I have mixed feelings about the Jilligan's Island activity. It was well conceived and a good activity, but I think it would have fit better in a semester long course. From talking to others in the class, we felt like it was one more thing to do and did not have the time to devote to it that it deserved. I'm sorry for the guys that designed it, they were probably short changed by a lot of people in the class.
From the instructor-to-be point of view:
How is there enough hours in the day to do it all? This week's discussions on Social Presence, Adapting Traditional Activities, and the activity "Jilligan's Island" were thought provoking but very time intensive. Just trying to keep my head above water, as a student, was hard enough but trying to keep on top of all of the topics, read hundreds of discussion thread, all the while being bombarded by student questions seems like an impossible task.
I guess I'll get a small taste of the multi-tasking needed, this week, as my group is leading a discussion on Communication for online courses.
Following the discussion on Social Presence has been an eye opening experience. With six years as a classroom teacher, establishing a social presence has come easy. Being in close proximity to the students has allowed my to share my life with them and become a part of their lives, I really never considered that it would be more difficult to establish the same type of relationship only meeting students online. There were some really good tools and strategies shared and pointed out in the texts.
One week down, four more to go... I'm anxious to see what this week brings.
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