Week 6 Reflections

I cannot imagine teaching my online courses without some sort of communication tools. I know many professors that only ise the discussion forums for communication and it is not as effecitve in collaboration as some of the tools that we have used in this class. Students want additional means of communicating with their classmates and the professor. It is not enough to throw a topic out on a discussion forums to 20-30 students and expect them to provide meaningful exchanges between one another.

There is so much reluctance and resistance to change in higher education. We cannot use the excuse that it costs too much because some of the best tools to enhance communication or very reasonable or free. There are no excuses. If I had a magic wand I would ensure that every person teaching an online course had to be a student in both a really well constructed online course and a really poorly designed course.

Texting in Class

I subscribe to the Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus and received this in my Inbox yesterday. I only teach one undergrad class and I get SO irritated at the students texting in class. Any suggestions?

Guilt Is Not Enough to Stop Students From Texting in Class

Week 5 Reflections

The MAPping activity was very useful. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that the website “Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus” was not a real website. I used the website activity with my children as well and my oldest was baffled that there would be something “fake” on the Internet. The links within the document led to either the document itself or Wikipedia. When using other search engines such as Google.com, Altavitsa.com, and Yahoo.com, the search yielded about the same results. The website listed “Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus” first and then some sites referencing it as a spoof. My son pointed out that it was listed first on all the searches so it must be real. It wasn’t until we read down the list that he realized the additional information regarding the site. I went to www.easywhois.com to do a search on the website but nothing came up. I did another search for another website and it worked fine so maybe it was the particular site. The website was created in 1998 and had numerous page revisions until 2009. It was originally created for entertainment but later became used for educational purposes, as noted in Dr. November’s article.

The implications were evident when I talked to my children about this. We have good filters on our home computer and I have not been overly concerned about them accessing inappropriate material. It was a great opportunity to share with them the importance of being an informed consumer of information. Lessons such as these should be conducted in the classrooms to teach children this at any early age.

I have been interested in setting up an account in Delicious for a while. It was a good opportunity for me to consolidate and organize some folders on my desktop and many links within my favorites. I especially like the fact that I can network and learn of other informative sites that could be useful. Bookmarking applications could be a useful tool for my students to gather useful websites, share them, and set up networks with other users.

Week 4 Reflections

Ironically, this week I received a review copy of a new textbook titled "Instruction for Learning." Normally this book would have found its place among the other textbooks that will not be used because it is not related to my discipline. I took some time to review the contents of the book because of its relevance to the current week in class. It is full of information related to the 10 research based principles and I will be sharing with my colleagues for possible implementation in their courses.

The tenet is which I most readily relate would be the one on motivation. I think this is because of my fields of special education and classroom management. I have witnessed the most disengaged, poor performing students become interested in learning once they became motivated. This may be through the use of technology, or simply finding what interests them and applying it to the learning environment. I think teachers underestimate the power of motivation.

I am actually in the process of implementing some sort of eportfolio system both for the teacher education program candidates and my educational diagnostician graduate students. It is a daunting task and I am just waiting on the right people to help get this from a theory to practice! Under the right circumstances and guidance I believe that an eportfolio system is imperative to students graduating and entering the workforce.

Week 3 Reflections

The idea of using a wiki to train cooperating teachers and university supervisors for student teachers came to me this week. We currently have a training module for them to complete but it has become pretty cumbersome. I would like a centralized location to store documents for easy retrieval and document dates of access by users. This course has provided me with the opportunity to explore the usefulness of a wiki for this purpose. I will slowly continue to add documents to the wiki and grant access to others to contribute and edit as well.

Overall, the advantages of wikis are numerous. I have used them several times during my doctoral coursework when completing group assignments. It provides an organized space for all members to contribute to without having to worry about a ton of emails going back and forth. The one disadvantage I can think of is the reliability of information contained within a wiki. The information is only as reliable as the person inputting the information.

I will be brainstorming for ideas on uses for wikis in my classes. The are fill of Digital Natives and while some of them are unfamiliar with wikis, I bet most of them will embrace the technology, especially if provided support and encouragement. My graduate students, while more reluctant could benefit from the use of a wiki during their internships. They are placed in many different locations in Texas and need a spot to collaborate and share ideas.