Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Moving Our Community Online




Last night marked our final f2f class before our 5-week online adventure. Fortunately, we have established a collaborative community and we should be ready to move our learning and interactions to an online environment. Our first online week (starting Feb. 20) will feature viewing our digital stories in our Facebook site and providing one strength and one suggestions for each story. Viewing these stories is an ideal way to begin our online experience together as it will help all of us know each other a little more deeply.
Robyn effectively shared her enthusiasm for and knowledge of the DropBox application and I download the application this morning! I look forward to Toni's online presentation next week. Fortunately, our f2f presentations have modeled well organized, clear and detailed approaches to sharing resources with others.
We also probed a little more deeply into Bransford and Papert and explored similarities in the approaches of the two scholars. Results from this group work will be posted on our Facebook account.
I look forward to this next step in our learning adventure.
My "old" hip made it very clear to me last night that it has no more 3 hour classes left in it (after 40 years of good service in this area), so I look forward to returning in about 6 weeks with the new model.

9 comments:

  1. This was probably my favorite class so far - I've liked all the exercises and activities we've done, but this lecture sort of gave the backbone to WHY we're doing all of this.

    My wife had to interview a high school technology director for a class, and they said their biggest issue is getting teachers to use the technology in a meaningful way - the students in one classroom all got iPads, but they ended up just playing with them when they weren't working. The lecture about affordances made me think of this, and how education needs to come first when it comes to technology in the classroom.

    --Bryon Dudley

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    1. This is definitely a problem I see with schools. Technology is put in classrooms because "we need to use technology." Instead of thinking how can a certain tool help improve instruction or learning, technology is used just to say it has been used.

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  2. I really think this class went very smoothly. I enjoyed Robyn's resource review and plan on using it in the near future, especially when I get my own classroom as a teacher. I also enjoyed working with other classmates and collaborating with them about the reading. This class was very informative and really got me prepared and ready for our online weeks of classes.

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  3. I wish I had been able to make it too class, it sounds like I would have enjoyed it! I do have 1 important question, do we need to be logged into our class web page during the actual time? If someone could email me and let me know I would appreciate it! My email is sconklin@iastate.edu

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  4. I am excited to try this online class portion. I think in a technology class, it is nice that we are exploring this "form" of technology with online instruction and interaction.

    I'm also excited about viewing all of the digital stories. Even though they are somewhat short in length, they usually end up being quite meaningful.

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    1. I'm also looking forward to the online portion... I help develop online courses for Iowa State, but I have never actually taken a course (and gotten a grade for it) through an online environment.

      I've checked out the digital stories that have been posted so far, and they are wonderful! I think the 2-3 minute length is perfect... you're right, it's very short in length, but everyone so far has been able to tell their story in that amount of time. I'm looking forward to viewing the rest of them as they are posted tomorrow night!

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  5. I am looking forward to this online portion of the class; mainly so I can focus on it when I have the time to. I sit on campus a lot while waiting between classes, so that would be a good time to go over the content of the week and prepare myself for the assignment that week. Not to mention, I wont have to wait for the bus, so that is a plus.

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  6. I'm back and look forward to being active next week. My surgery went well and with great support from family and friends, I am doing very well. I am already in less pain than before the surgery!
    In answer to Sara's question, there is not need to be online during class time Monday night, although that might be a convenient time to get started with the week's activities. I look forward to working with all of you online.

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    1. Very glad to hear that the surgery was a success! I hope things continue to get better for you over the next few weeks of online class time.

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