Week 2

Week 2 is begun. I am so impressed with the way things have started out. Some of the blogs are really beautiful and creative, and postings are thoughtful and insightful. I am always impressed with the wealth and diversity of experience of the students in this course.

We are trying a few new things this time around. One is dividing the discussion between the discussion board and the blogs. CoN admin had told us we need to introduce students to social networking, and strongly suggested use of an external blog. In previous semesters we required all the discussion to happen in the blogs, but this time we've tried splitting it. We envision the discussion boards as the place for discussion and analysis, and the blogs as more personal reflection and opinion. The use of the blog is not optional; it was intentionally designed into the course from the beginning.

I think we should rename module 1 as "fear factor". Starting right off with creating a blog can be intimidating -- we recognize that. But in some ways it's like ripping off a band aid. Better to just get it going quickly. Once they've done this (creating a blog), most folks realize that technology doesn't have to be totally intimidating, and that you CAN be successful in learning new technologies.

The second new thing will come up in module 4. We have previously used Captivate to create flash movies, when we wanted to put voice with powerpoint slides. But iphones and ipads don't accommodate flash movies (yet), and if the movie was very long (more than 10 minutes) it seemed to take forever to download. So I experimented with using the live classroom as if I had archived a live lecture. This archive can be viewed online within the live classroom, or can be downloaded as mp3 or mp4 file (these are supposedly compatible with ipods etc.)

I will be interested to hear how that works, and what people think about the format.

Take care,

Kathy