Group items tagged

This is an academic paper examining the reasons why an online learning group should 'move ... from cohort to community.' (abstract), and how students resources and strategies may be managed to accomplish this. The paper asserts that students in a distance learning situation are isolated from each other and the teacher, therefore it is of vital importance that the cohort needs to create a sense of community rather than simply exist alone in the virtual learning room. The article quotes Vygotsky's social development theory of 1978, Selznik's seven elements of community: history, identity, mutuality, plurality, autonomy, participation, and integration (1996), and how the author's of the article modified the characteristics to conform more with current online learning theory. I found this article particularly relevant to the current situation I find myself in. Even though I am happy in my own space and don't need the close interaction with others, I can see that it is important to push myself forward in the sense of gleaning the most benefit from the course and those many intelligent people out there. This is difficult for me because I find the time necessary to maintain so many contacts, and actually have something worthwhile to say and share goes against my slow, ponderous thinking and non-gregarious nature!

Since we are learning about Web 2.0, this article discussed science teaching with the use of social networks and communication tools. Mostly at a college level but I think it could apply to HS.

This article relates to earlier comments that some of us have been discussing on the bookmark, "Degrees, Distance, Dollars."

This article is about the continually evolving face of online education. The students that choose online educations are usually "non-traditional" students... so online schools need to be non-traditional also!

This is a nice thing that someone put together. It categorizes today's web 2.0 websites into a Bloom's Taxonomy of thinking.

I really liked this and printed out to give me some ideas about the Web 2.0 Tools. I enjoyed the organization of this with the Blooms taxonomy.

Great site! So much information in one place.

A scientific study of the educational practicality of online education versus conventional face-to-face, brick and mortar environments. Issues of retention as well as escalated drop-out rates for online education are evaluated.