I was registered for an online class during the Spring 08 semester and the major project for the semester included being grouped with classmates from all over (making it difficult to facilitate collaborations), creating a module to teach the class (with software that nobody was knowledgeable about), creating assignments for our peers and then marking any assignments we created for ~15 other classmates.  This was to go on, one group per week, for 4 of the 7 weeks that this class was scheduled.  My next question is: why even have a prof?  What is he being paid for?  Week one and two had one assignment, several discussion questions, some odds and ends to contribute, and chats in 3 different “chat rooms” where one student was asked to moderate (myself in my assigned chat room), but given now direction or topic, so turned into a wasted hour of rambling.  Week 3 was when we received our groups and topics and were to create a module worth 40% of our mark.

Needless to say, I have dropped the class (the first one I ever seriously considered dropping and now have dropped).  I felt terribly guilty in doing this, since I had been assigned a group to create the module with, however, the level of stress and frustration that I was experiencing coupled with a serious lack of sleep was beginning to affect my health and my family life to a degree that I was very uncomfortable and unhappy with.

I have taken other online classes and had starkly different experiences.  Alec Couros taught ECI 831 Winter 08 semester and it was outstanding – the best class I have EVER taken – collaborative, clearly outlined expectations, exposure to several new technologies, full support from instructor and peers, reasonable assignments (my blog was one of them, which I intend to keep up- obviously!)… I could go on and on.  My point is that I have had other experiences to compare this to and even other online classes I have taken did not result in such frustration and stress as this semester’s class has.

Your thoughts on this format for a grad class?

1. Choose a design
2. Enter the information (Location, time, host, message, etc.)
3. Enter the guest’s email addresses and send.

Now these instructions are based on me pushing buttons and using no tutorial, so they are probably a little rough around the edges, but it is clearly easy to use.

I have previously used the Event tool in Facebook, but still had to email people on my guest list who were not members of Facebook, so it meant two different places to look and not everyone checked their Facebook often enough to respond in a timely manner. Evite sends the invitation to their email, which most people check fairly regularly and as the “host”, you can check a  box to receive notification when someone replies and can view your invitation status at any time to see who has viewed the invitation or update the details.

Check it out.  I would be interested to know if you have used other sites like this and what their benefits are.

A few months ago I downloaded Jing and used it to create a tutorials about how to use Ning and what is RSS and using Google Reader. I found Jing fairly user friendly and had few problems using it. Perhaps one of the downfalls (or perhaps it is a good thing) is that Jing only allows 5 minutes of recording time. I wanted to experiment with Camtasia, but found out that it was no longer freely available. Then I heard that there was a free 30 day trial available while watching the great videos that my classmate Walter had created and Jing began coming up with viruses on my computer (not sure why).

I downloaded the free 30 day trial of Camtasia and went into the program and had to double-check that I had not accidentally opened Windows Movie Maker, because it looked very similar, which sort of disappointed me because I had already learned and used Movie Maker at the beginning of the semester to create my bio video. Right now, I am thinking it would not have been bad if it was like Movie Maker! Camtasia has the same layout as far as the timeline, storyboard and some of the editing features, but then goes beyond that to let you capture video, audio and information from Powerpoint too.

I viewed several of the tutorial videos that Camtasia has available, however, I am one of those people that learns by doing, so watching a video is only average for me – I have to dive in. I wrote a bit of an outline so that I did not miss anything and then opened a number of tabs in Firefox so that I could move seamlessly from one idea to the next. This worked fairly well, but I had to record several times because at first, I could not recognize when the recording had started, then I was forgetting to include some things, and towards the end, I was losing my voice due to coughing with the cold I picked up last week. After all of the battles with recording, I finally had a finished recording which I now needed to put together on the timeline. This part wasn’t too bad, but it was difficult to align the video with the audio sometimes and took a bit of fine-tuning.

When I finally had all of the information that I wished to include, I went to produce the video. The rendering took a really long time and then was in a format that Screencast.com did not recognize, which was frustrating since Screencast.com is where Camtasia suggests you upload your video to and I had chosen the format that Camtasia suggests. After re-rendering several times, in various formats, and then changing how I got the video into Screencast.com, I had my first video ready. Whew!! One more to go – oh no!

Actually, when you consider that I didn’t spend tonnes of time learning all of the features of Camtasia, the videos turned out alright.  I hope to spend some more time tinkering with Camtasia and see if there is an easier way to render, because this part really made my computer work (it was humming and I was ready for it to either start hovering or go up in smoke).

Anyways, in the end, I created the two videos that I was aiming for, so I am happy despite my struggles.

The HR Connection Video

Please let me know if you are unable to open it – I had some MAJOR technical difficulties which I will discuss in an upcoming post.

They do a national search and build a network to recruit staff. Check out the qualifications for teaching at SLA:
• Applicants must be PA State Certified or eligible for PA State Certification in their subject area.
• Applicants must be committed to the idea that we teach students first and our subjects second.
• Applicants must be willing to challenge students to work in an inquiry-driven, project based environment.
• Applicants must be willing to work collaboratively.
• Applicants must be willing to work in a diverse environment with students who reflect the rich heritage of Philadelphia.
• Applicants should have a strong background in technology infusion into the classroom and be willing to see their classroom as happening both on and offline.
• Applicants should have an interest in developing extra-curricular activities.
• Applicants should be energetic, flexible, and have a strong desire to work with administrators, fellow teachers, parents, and students to create a school that reflects SLA’s core values.

I completely LOVE their strong commitment to communicating with parents. There seems to be a lot of interaction with parents and opportunity for parents to be as involved as they would like to be.

Their mission is also shared openly and students and staff live this mission together: “How do we learn? What can we create? What does it mean to lead?” This commitment to this mission, their philosophy of distributed leadership, and not trying to be everything to everyone, but doing what they do well is refreshing.

The idea of UDL is very interesting to me. I had not heard of it before Tuesday night, but the Center for Applied Special Technology has an excellent definition of it: “Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for designing curricula that enable all individuals to gain knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm for learning. UDL provides rich supports for learning and reduces barriers to the curriculum while maintaining high achievement standards for all.” I want to spend more time learning about this concept of curriculum design as I am in charge of curriculum development at the law firm that I work at and think this might be useful.

They do have filters in place to monitor online activity, but they still have issues just like every other school. I was surprised when I went to the SLA website that they have the student websites so readily available to the world. It concerned me with how much information students shared here. Maybe they are needless fears that the media has instilled in me, but I nevertheless do have them. Don’t get me wrong, I think that the level of technological use at this school is fantastic and will open many doors of opportunity for the students which is evident on the masterpiece websites they have, but there is just a lot of information that we usually advise students (and even adults sometimes) not to post.

There are SO many questions that came to me after the presentation. Here are just a few: I wonder if they have the same problems that we do with technology? What is their Internet policy? What is their view on cell phones and iPods in the classroom? How are they funded? How is curriculum development dealt with (I don’t know how it works in the US, but in SK, we have to follow the SK curriculum and do not have that type of freedom to develop our own curriculum at individual schools – correct me if I am wrong here)? How are personal laptops dealt with? What advice would they have to teachers about implementing technology; 1:1; parent communication; social networking in schools (or as Chris referred to it – academic networking – maybe this would motivate teachers to use it in classrooms!)?

See my fellow classmates posts about Chris’ great presentation: Rosanne, Dave, Corey, Ken, Leah, Marlene, Shaun, Walter

from www.voki.com posted with vodpod