This week I have been thinking more about how my students will view the content and ssignments for my course. I'm trying to anticipate the questions they would have in a face-to-face course and make sure they are answered in my directions to them since I can't immediately answer questions online. I hope they will still feel comfortable enough to use the question page or email if they need to, though, because I can't anticipate everything.

I think I have gained better skills when it comes to writing and answering discussion questions. Our readings, such as Dr. T's with the lists of question types, help spell out this sometimes-ambiguous process in a clear, explicit way.

I knew that group work was an important part of education, even though I sometimes don't like it, but I didn't know that so many people feel it is an essential part of online education. The COFA videos particularly stress that it's not just some "extra" or "easy" thing (in fact, it's often not easy) that teachers just do so that they have fewer assignments to grade. Rather, it's an essential skill to foster so that students are prepared to work in groups in their future occupations.

Lastly, what I know I will not forget tomorrow, or for a very long time, was the impact that the video from Sir Ken had on me. My initial reaction was that I loved the video and what he said. As I've thought more about it since then, I still love the video and how it presented his material in a more tangible and entertaining way. And I still like most of the content, but I'm thinking more critically about what he said about divergent thinking. The longitudinal study that showed that children lost their genius ability for divergent thinking quickly as they became "educated" had some shock value, but the more I think about it, I don't think that's as big of a problem as Sir Ken thinks it is. Some people are good at somethings, others are good at different things. Not everyone needs to be a genius at divergent thinking. For example, I want my accountant (if I had enough money to need an accountant!) to be very good at knowing the one right answer all the time when it comes to my money. I don't need him to invent 10,000 different ways to do my taxes. That said, I still very much enjoyed the Sir Ken video.

blog reflection 2

This week I began to think about and visualize my online class and potential students much more as I listened to and read about online activities and younger learners. These ideas and “people” are starting to become more real to me the more I plan my course and learn about how different online classes are taught.

I have seen how online learning is much more social than I originally thought, even in an asynchronous course. Since my students are mainly high schoolers, that’s very important to keep in mind. Teens see the classroom as a place to socialize as much as they see it as a place to learn (or even more so…). This has made me think about how I can incorporate that into my class. I wasn’t originally going to include a group activity, but now I think I might find a way to encourage more collaboration online. Skype or one of the many online drawing/whiteboard tools could work for that.

Before this class, I knew a lot about online synchronous education for adults, because I’ve taken 6 classes in Elluminate. I really enjoyed those and got a lot out of our lectures and discussions…just as much as I would in a face-to-face class. I did not know very much about asynchronous online classes, though, or how they could work for younger students. After this week, and especially after reading Johnson and Manning’s chapter 16, I see how there are many similar concepts, but that some things will have to change for my asynchronous high school class. For example, I will need to address the fact that 9th graders aren’t as independently motivated as adults, and will require more parent involvement and supervision (though much less than 2nd graders would). I will address parents and expectations for their support in my class syllabus.

Something that I will not forget tomorrow is something that was mentioned in the COFA video for this week: that online classes have to have a solid pedagogical foundation, and that technology should not be used just for the sake of technology. Now I see why we were asked to spell out our educational philosophy before we did much work on our online classes.

P.S. Sorry I had to change my bloglink-- my new blog for this class was not showing up on my dashboard at all... I'll try to merge the new and the old soon.