Week 7 Stuff

Image posted by Uninen @ Flickr

• listen to weekly podcast
• course build: You know what to do here, just keep on building. In theory, I’m asking for a second module. In practice, do some building and ask the rest of us for feedback.
• blog entry: Reflection on learning from the week, discuss how your course building is going, and briefly discuss course content you found.

• wiki entry: I know you all took the district’s FERPA Online Tutorial so you would have access to the new SIS system; however, what really is FERPA and how/why is it relevant to online teaching and learning? Many institutions are starting to question whether or not students should be allowed to post class work in "public" forums like blogs and wikis, etc.
  
• find course content: Identify a guest speaker/lecturer you could ask to participate in course somehow. Who would it be? Why that person? How might you incorporate them into the course (online discussion, respond to a certain week’s worth of blogs, make a brief audio file you could upload, record and interview in Skype, etc.)?
• iGoogle: nothing required
• new technologies: Don’t forget that “low-tech” matters! The phone is a very useful technology in web-based teaching and learning. I definitely retain more students by calling people during the first couple weeks of classes if they are slipping; or heck, just taking the time to call. So many times they are just not getting one thing and are therefore falling behind fast. I find that the majority of my students can figure out the various technologies with very little support (beyond what the websites provide). In other words, I don’t spend very much time developing technology support materials. Instead, I spend my time trying to meet with the one or two students per class that really struggle with the technology. And I try to meet with them f2f (sometimes on the weekends at a Starbucks with my laptop). This may sound crazy, however, it is the price I pay for using technologies that are not officially supported by the college (like most of the stuff we are using in this course). Now, if you are using technologies officially sanctioned by the college, there are usually other support resources (ie, help desks) that you can have your students call for technology help. I have found, however, I still have to do technology support with my students; email and now instant messaging are helping a lot with tech support (as well as quick Jing videos).