Week 24 catchup: Summarise, Assess and Contribute

So I have found my way to the end of the course. Below are the links to my blog postings for this course.

I have loved this course from the moment I was sent the link to it. The syllabus promised an interesting mix between theory and practical. I love trying out new things but I need to be guided in this area – I need someone to suggest something to me and to give me a bit of introduction as to how or why I should do it. Then I feel that I am in a position to play with it and learn how I can use and apply it.

Would I recommend this course to others? Most definitely. Anyone using or wanting to add web technology to their course delivery will find this course an exciting introduction to ‘what is out there’. I want to come back and keep playing and learning and adding to my courses – even though I teach face-to-face. It doesn’t matter how the course is taught, the tools and ideas apply to it all.

I have prepared a final video on how I have applied my new-found knowledge to one of my courses.

I have gone over the rubric of the course expectations. I started the course last year and regularly completed the weekly posts but this year has been slightly different. I had good intentions and even got the first week back completed on time (week 13) but after that things got a bit out of control. There are a number of reasons for that but mainly for me it was the start of a new academic year and there were extra pressures because of the change in software being taught (hello Microsoft Office 2010) which has certainly taken me longer to work through than I thought. I was reading the weekly requirements on a fairly regular basis and I did keep reading the textbook but I didn’t complete the tasks as I should have. Fortunately, having completed the readings and knowing the type of task required did allow me to think about what I would post – when I had time. Hence all of the catchup posts!!!! After completing the mid-semester checkup I was determined to comment on others posts but that didn’t happen and now the number of posts to look at are overwhelming. However, because I was regularly coming back to the course website I was able to peruse the posts coming through the feed.

What has all this taught me? Besides the learning experiences I have had, the difficulty I have experienced in completing the tasks has taught me to be aware of what students are doing and catch up with them as soon as they start falling behind. Maybe some check point post summaries worth a small value of marks would be enough to keep students on track. For example, the mid year summary in this course was great for ensuring I was up to date before the Christmas break. Maybe a monthly summary (being about every 4 weeks) might also be useful to ensure everyone is coping ok. I have also learned that allowing catch up posts is great – I may have fallen behind but at least I am finally here! I found it difficult coming back from the break in remembering how I had to add video and even to add a post! All this was so new to me that I had to refresh my learning. Another thing to remember when interacting with our students. I look back at my posts and discover that they are mainly reflective posts – what I think, my journey, how it all fits together for me. I think that is what I needed to do for this course – figure out where I stand and how things fit together. I am keen to return as a mentor next time around so I can keep adding to my knowledge, learn about the tools available and see what others are doing while adding to the collective knowledge in any way I can.

Some of the biggest things I have learned about using blogs are:

give all posts useful tags and categories (and I still need to determine what is the difference between tags and categories)
provide a link to the articles I am referring to (at least I can then find the article again – provided it is still at that link)
use the ‘read more’ option to make the posts showing on my blog smaller so that more posts can be shown on the page
make sure I reflect on my difficulties with blogging as others could have the same problems and I found it frustrating when I couldn’t figure out how to do things and I couldn’t find help from others! And tag these ‘how to’ posts accordingly it is easier to find again – I hate to think how much time it took me to find my post on how I added by Jing to the blog!

Week 1: Introduction, setting up my blog, setting up Diigo, visiting others blogs

Week 2: Teaching and Learning Online, reflection on RSS

Week 3: Pedagogy and Course Design

Week 4: Materials for Online and Prezi presentation

Week 5: The Online Syllabus

Week 6: Creating Presentations and getting Jing to work in WordPress

Week 7: The Online Classroom

Week 8: Creating Community and Symbaloo of online teaching tools

Week 9: Student Activities

Week 10: Open Platforms for Teaching and Learning

Week 11: Class Resources and Intellectual Property

Week 12: Resources Online / Mid-year Self-Assessment Check