Ced0550: Week Three - Facilitating

I'm starting to feel a bit like some of my students feel when I introduce new material. Sometimes I think I expect my students to catch on too quickly, or I forget that just because I have taught something for five years doesn't mean that my students have heard it for five years. To them, it's new. A version of this is happening to me in our class. The challenge these next few weeks is to use Elluminate to prepare a 15 minute lesson on a topic of choice. I like my topic and think it applies to many teachers. I want to share/explore policies that allow all students, regardless of age, to take advantaged of some of the great Web 2.0 tools. My topic stems from the challenges I've faced with some websites requiring an age limitation in order to register. The best example I've come across is Bibme.org, a free bibliography-creating website. It's perfect for my students - very useful and easy to learn. In order to register, however, students are supposed to be 13 years old. That's a problem for my 5th and 6th graders. So I want to discuss some ideas of getting around this dilemma. Thus, the choice and creation of a lesson won't be too difficult. Actually presenting it, however, could be the real challenge. I've messed around a bit with Elluminate, but I have to be honest in admitting that I'm not quite ready to take charge. I'm feeling a bit confused by the whole process. Perhaps once I watch someone's example, I'll be able to get mine together. I think it's just interesting how much of a hands on thing technology is. One really has to be willing to jump in and wade through the unknown. Thank goodness I've come a long way in this and now am not so frightened by things I haven't tried before. I'm also thankful that by now I've created enough connection with others to bounce ideas off off them and have some of my doubts and questions answered.

Ced0550: Week Two - Facilitating Format

This week's lesson had us focusing on the recommended tools for facilitating an online class, from prompting discussions to responding to students to following-up in a timely manner. I found the tools very straightforward and easy to understand. In many ways, they are the same tools we use in a traditional classroom setting, and all teachers could really benefit from incorporating them into whatever classroom environment they teach.

What I am discovering quickly, however, is that it is one thing to study the tools and another thing to actually get good at using them. Our class activity had each of us taking a turn at facilitating, participating, and recording a discussion. Now anyone can tell you that I have NO problem chattering away non-stop, but what I discovered is how much I rely on my students' non-verbals to teach. In my current classroom I watch for confused looks or flat out boredom to signal me to either explain more or toss in a funny joke or story to pull them back. Obviously online I have no idea how my audience is reacting. That's really tough. What I found is that I quickly became self-conscious when I suddenly felt myself talking for too long of a period. It felt like I was suddenly alone. I could just picture my students rolling their eyes or walking away from their computer to get a drink or playing a game while my droning voice humms in the background. Yikes! Another difficulty was multi-tasking. While talking, I had to keep my eyes constantly flying on the screen to watch for a hand up or a message in the chat area. I can only imagine how challenging it must be for our instructors when so many of us students use the chat feature for idle dribble and sarcasm. No wonder they have to take a minute to scroll back and look for real questions. Wow! I'm surprised we haven't been told to knock it off.

In this class, I can really see how the instructors are working hard to keep us tuned in and on task. Rather than sitting back and watching or listening, we are constantly asked to do something and participate. I like how a variety of communication tools are used. We write in the chat area; we speak using our mics; we post our thoughts using text tools directly on the whiteboard. I can honestly say that I am much more focused during class because of our active involvement. In fact, I'm afraid to walk away at all for fear of what I'll miss or be asked to do. That's probably a good thing!

Cedo550: Week One - Online Learning

Enrolling in this program is the first time that I've taken online classes, so my impressions have been formed from my experiences here. Overall, the experience has been wonderful, and although it took a bit of time to understand all the technical issues, once I got rolling, everything fell into place. So, with this in mind, I at first assumed that the articles and sites that we were asked to examine this first week would mimic what we've been doing in class as online learners. Little did I know how extensive the whole online learning environment is and how far it's going. Much of the classes we've been taking have been more or less a lecture type of format with some interactive activities taking place. Thus, I thought that this was the typical format for high school and middle school students when they take online classes. How surprised I was to discover just how interactive and how large the online learning community is. Classes offered take the form of games, discussions, group work, and so much more. In addition, I was impressed at how complex the course were in terms of objectives and design. Clearly a ton of planning has gone into many of the courses, and each one seemed to address everything from learning style to communication to instructor involvement. In addition, each class addresses skills aimed at getting students to develop their critical thinking. As I perused to wide variety of courses, I kept thinking how much my own kids, one of whom is a high schooler, would enjoy some of these classes. So many classes in the traditional setting, especially high school classes, spend much of their time lecturing with students taking notes. Even though many teachers work hard to include some variety, many are still unfamiliar with technology and/or afraid to do something different. Thus, the students are bored and not engaged.

The other thing that struck me from a teacher's standpoint is how available the instructors are and how much time they must put into their online curriculum. Not only does the instructor have to search to include all the technologies, but then he/she has to be available almost 24/7 to help students. It all makes me wonder what the salary is for online instructors and how proportional that is to the time they put in. And as someone stated in their discussion, I wonder how instructors will be effected as the enrollment continues to rise. Will class size become an issue?