EDUC251

I thought I'd try something a little bit different for Module 5, and do a CMS review of a current online course that I've been working on, called Visual Storytelling. It's a review of a Blackboard/Vista-based online class, but I'm also blending a couple of presentation technologies together to create this - SlideRocket and Camtasia. If you take a look at it, you'll want to make sure your audio is turned on - otherwise, it won't make much sense... It runs just under 10 minutes. This was a useful exercise for me, because I became aware of numerous changes I'd like to make for the next iteration of this class. These presentation tools are now very powerful and easier to use than in the past. SlideRocket has only been around for about 2 years, and it keeps getting better! You can also access this presentation by way of my Web2.0 Chronicle blog.

Thanks Bruce for showing how you use Blackboard for one of your courses. I do agree that some of the mature LMS need to make it easier to use Web 2.0 tools. Jennifer's comments about being able to use these tools is so appropriate. All of these wonderful tools are available, the problem is learning when and how to use them in our online teaching.

Thanks everyone for your feedback and comments! Mary Ann, I did see your photos from the Galapagos, and it seems like they will make great material for an online class presentation especially with your underlying message - the importance of biodiversity to our long term survival. I'm really glad you're teaching this material... I wish we were more aware of these dire issues 50 years ago! The Visual Storytelling class will be offered again in Fall 2011. Susan... One useful application of online lectures/presentations is that they can free up classroom time for more exploratory dialog and hands-on activities, as appropriate. Students also like them, because they can stop and review material at their own pace. Jennifer - I'll be happy to give an overview some presentation media I use during your office hour on Thursday. This would be a good experience for me, since I've never taught a session using Elluminate. If you could give me some quick tips beforehand, that would be welcome. I can't do it this week, but Feb 24th or following Thursdays look open.

I received the following from Norma Whitacre and thought I'd pass it along. Our focus this week in EDUC251 is on this and is appropriate introduction to this course. from Norma: The third class in the series is offered spring quarter. It is Assessment in eLearning, EDCU 252. I hired Robin Jeffers, an assessment expert, to teach it, and she is great. Class begins the second week of the quarter and meets on campus two days only: Tuesdays. April 12 and June 7, 4:30-6:20, item 2239. A full class description is attached. (bookmarked above) We are also offering EDUC 250, the Introductory class if you know anyone who wants it.

I haven't seen the content for this course, but it's one I'd actually consider taking myself. (Though I imagine I'd stir up some controversy.)

Jennifer, it would AWESOME to have to in the class and have another voice to help reason through and learn about assessment. Please do take it!!!!

Using Google, I found this source for math support for online educators. It is very well put together and extremely easy to use. Although I'm not a math instructor, if I were, I would enjoy using this support program because it seems well organized and flows in a logical fashion. There are links to all of an instructor's basic questions.

Pearson's got some decent resources to go along with their text books. I've known several instructors who've used MyMathLab and enjoyed it. Many instructors are surprised when I ask them what online resources are provided by their textbook publishers. The publishers are scrambling to keep up and add value, because they know they are at risk for becoming obsolete, especially in math.

The Blackboard Vista used by BC is a closed LMS. The Instructure Canvas is an open system.

Even though this LMS is an open one, it seems on the surface to be quite useable. What I liked about it is that it is connected to Google.

Instructure can be open or closed. When you create a course, it gives you both licensing (copyright) and access options. Also, if a campus were to pay for a subscription and adopt it as their LMS, they could manage the access at an administrative level.

I'm currently searching for an LMS solution for our project, and this is one I am exploring. You can check it out for free on this page.

Mary Ann and I are running close to each other...I just saw the mods in Balckboard listed in Canvas. There were a few missing and I was wondering how many mods it will hold Jennifer? Also, I did see a discussion area but I don't know if you uploaded it to canvas or if it belongs to canvas.

I think I hid some of the stuff in the site I set up, since I don't know how the program folks will feel about it being public. If you set up your own account, you can get a better idea of all the features.

I have researched this LMS and think it is worth a second look!

I'm glad you had a chance to take a look. I've really enjoyed playing around with it.

This week the focus is on assessment and evidence of understanding. The emphasis is, of course, on how we assess our students. However, eteachers can be more easily observed, so I thought the community might find it interesting as to how I, as an eteacher, am assessed. (The students do an automated self-paced lesson and then take a practice quiz. If they have questions during the lesson or in order to go the next one, we interact. Based on the quiz and other questions/discussions we have, I pass them to the next lesson. I have up to 4 students in one session.) Once a month, my supervisor listens to one of the recorded sessions and writes up an assessment. What I find interesting that is unique to elearning, is that my use of the technology environment goes into my assessment. I need to be logged in on time, I need to effectively switch among my students, etc. Also, if an area is weak, a request by my supervisor to re-take an automated class I have taken before - such as effective questioning - might be assigned.

The online environment provides for easy capture of the session. The requirement for teaching include having a degree and a background check, but not a teaching certificate. I feel the monitoring is an extra check and balance on both how we are teaching and our online presence. We go through training and have guidelines on what we can and cannot discuss with the students - such as sharing emails, contacts outside of class, etc. Recently this has come into focus, as the regular school teachers at the school I am tutoring with (we are a scheduled once a week class during the school year) encouraged the students to ask where we live, etc., to feel more connected. On our teacher platform, the teachers and our supervisor were able to post and share with each other on how they were and should be handling this. It is a balance - just as in a regular classroom - to be connected, yet have privacy. I do not find what information I should and should share or ask to be a problem for me, but the time focus is. The students are used to texting all the time and feel comofrtable with using the time that way. I have now developed my own transitions - from the explicit: "we've chatted enough for right now, please go on with your lesson" to a softer transition by using the information in our dialog to set-up a problem: You got so much snow! So if you had eight snowballs and split them evenly....".

This is fascinating! I've honestly never seen an instrument for a supervisor to evaluate an online teaching session. (Or maybe I just don't remember.) For distance education at BC, instructors/divisions can opt in to the online student evaluations. I don't know if Norma signed up to have this course included in the evals. If so, you may have received access to that today. As far as I know, that's the primary way teachers are evaluated here. It compares to how they are evaluated in f2f classes. For me, I like to get constant feedback from students, and that's why you see me poking around a lot, sending lots of email, and including self-checks. It's always an awful feeling to get to the end of a course and discover you could have made changes early on that would have made a big difference in learning. (But I always expect to discover some of that at the end, as well!) Thanks for sharing this!

I can't recall if I shared this before, but it's appropriate for this week, especially for anyone doing blended learning. Tony is an instructor I used to work with at BTC. He's using laptops for small group work, where they work together on projects and he visits the groups one at a time to check for understanding. It's a good example of continuous assessment in a classroom setting. How could this type of model be translated to a fully online course?

This is related to some of our inquiry last week about open courses. ELI is an important conference. I hope you get a chance to check out some of the free sessions online. "Educating in the Open: Philosophies, Innovations, and Stories February 14-16, 2011 * Washington, D.C. or Online Free Conference Streaming SessionsJoin us for the ELI 2011 Annual Meeting "Educating in the Open: Philosophies, Innovations, and Stories," where we as a community will explore the theme of openness in Washington, D.C., February 14-16. If you can't attend in person, participate online. We'll explore the many meanings of "openness": open textbooks, open curriculum, open research, and open resources, as well as openness to new ideas. Today's technologies have transformed the way we interact and engage with the world around us. New devices, services, and effective practices have increased access to information while new policies and philosophies that explore openness have accelerated that change. The growth of social networks and virtual communities has transformed the learning environment into an interactive place to share and build content and community using collaborative systems. * What are the opportunities and the challenges associated with educating in the open? * How might our learners benefit from becoming producers and consumers in this environment? * How can we, as a community of teaching and learning professionals, collaborate more openly? * What evidence do we have that the trend toward openness is having the impact we hope for? Through a highly interactive and engaging program, we'll also examine the value of cross-campus collaboration in the creation of new learning environments and explore strategies to develop campus environments built on engagement, collaboration, authenticity, and co-creation."

This is the recording from the office hours session on Thursday. Bruce was the only student from our class who showed up. The session was very informal and fun, with lots of drop-in guests along the way. Howard Rheingold showed up to see how we use Elluminate for office hours, so we gave him a tour through it. Dean Shareski joined us and helped share how he uses Elluminate with his students. We had a student from another course show up and share how she uses Twitter, and then ask some questions about google docs.

Unfortunately, I had to go to Renton on Friday...so I was busy creating a legal document ( during that time) for a situation with the state, I have found myself in! I started to watch this and will continue sometime this week.

This is an open online course about Digital Storytelling, that begins January 10. Feel free to sign up!

I wish I had more time in the day for the Digital Storytelling class... it looks like a great use of online apps.

I'm bumping this up. The course has been in session for over a month now, and there is some amazing stuff happening. It's an open online course, and students helped come up with the weekly assignments. Anyone could design an assignment and submit it at http://ds106.us/assignments/submit/ Then each week students share their work with the class. There are also daily photo shoots, and they've even created a pirate radio station where anyone can submit songs and create playlists. There are officially enrolled students, and others participating just for the experience. You can view participants at http://ds106.us/members/ Participants add their blog feeds to the course, and the posts are automatically added to the site. The wiki at http://ds106.us/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page includes the official course details, like syllabus and calendar. The creative work that is coming out of this, is simply stunning.

Here are some thoughts about creating a framework for a course I might teach. I posted them on my blog.

"Multi-disciplinary instruction must make meaningful connections among all subject areas." I think eLearning enables this connection. For example, in tutoring math online, audio doesn't always work well and I use a chat room with the students. This underlines their need for spelling in English.

I saw this and thought it might be an interesting read.

Liked the "post-mortem" question, about what would you do differently. It is a good reflective question about the module.

Thanks Ann. I appreciate that comment. I think the reason I put that in there was because modules are on-going and can be improved as the learners and I progress through them.

This is from last year, but it's got some important considerations in it. You've got to watch it until the end to get the full message, though.

The observation in this video is quite powerful. We have always been motivated by incentives, but the internet and technology has taken this to a new level. Small incentives can become big ones. We've always behaved this way - like coupons for food - a few cents makes a different buying decision. However, his discussion on how egames have become a major financial source for Facebook and the virtual world is replacing the "authentic" world shows how technology is transformational. The point - about how everything we do is being recorded and kept - and will this change how we behave is true.

Another review on Turkle's "Alone Together."

OMG...how totally eerie. How predictive! Amazing, thanks for sharing that Bruce.

The "cultural rachet effect" was particularly interesting to me. (For grown-ups, learning a new skill is painful, attention-demanding, and slow. Children learn unconsciously and effortlessly. Because of this, each new generation rapidly acquires all the accumulated innovations of the past without even knowing it. ) It becomes the new "normal", so rather than the computer, for example, being something new, its integrated as part of lives. It changes our footprint in the world and, therefore, the world.

I'll withhold judgment on this. What do you think?

I have one thought about this. California has been ahead of WA when it comes to turning out online teacher/instructors for community colleges. I could get the training I am now, at the U of CA (not certain which one) and at U of Utah; but this program on BC is new.

I haven't had time to read it yet, but it's an important read for me each year.

Jenkins is an important player in this online learning stuff. This piece brings up some important considerations. We will be talking about assessment next week, but I wanted to toss this to you now, to get your gears spinning.

I cannot understand why he is so worried about open book testing of indivduals; rather than thinking about how to set up a test that would allow all contributors to weigh in and answer. What is the point of the process of collabrative learning then? Or am I just naive?

One response to this article was the practical - give the questions before the exam and the students can do whatever they want prior to the test, but when the test is actually given, make it closed book. This emphasizes information retnetion more than information retreival, which seems to be his concern. That being said - whether a test or not - his points are interesting and requires a great deal of thinking through. Allowing collaboration, for example as Joy profers, during a short course time brings up the issue of bandwidth and accessibility, so a teacher needs to spend time on logistics.

Thanks for sharing this!

I liked that the platform is integrated in social networks that many students would be using. Also, Ruby on Rails - the underlying technology indicated in the article - is very powerful, but it is an open source product and would want to be sure about technology support works. That being said, this highlighted to me how complex and difficult chosing a LMS is.

They release the code open source, but this is a hosted, supported product with fees for service. I'm definitely going to spend more time checking it out.