Slowly Getting There

I am still working on my VoiceThred but I am almost done. I think I need to give up on my desire for it to be perfect as it's my first time working with this program. I am enjoying playing around with it though. It's really fun. Our class discussion is finished this week as well. Glad that's over - just another thing to be done. It was great and our discussion was quite detailed and had depth of conversation. I enjoyed our topic on assessment and mine inparticular on reflection. Good times. Now I NEED to finish Vioce Thread to day and do soem serious work onmy final project. Looking forward to devoting some time towards that!

Working on VoiceThread

I am now fully emerged in VoiceThread. I have been playing around with the technology and I look forward to actually trying to use it for our Team Earth project. If it works out I feel I will actually use this technology all of the time next year. As a PE teacher and a coach VT can come in very handy when trying to teach a new skill (PE) or learning a play (coaching). I can't wait to see how I do. I'm now too tired to continue though so I will wait until tomorrow. It's been quite a busy week with our partner assignments due, my team moderating a class activity, working on team projects, responding to class discussions. It's a lot! I also need to really start focusing on my final project. I feel I will have much more time next week for this. I hope so!

Partner Assignment Finished

Well I am officially done the partner assignment. Overall it went very smoothly and I actually really enjoy the course that my partner and I created. Next on the list is the team project and moderating. It's a busy week but I guess that's what to expect when you take a 12 week course in 6 weeks. On to VoiceThread!!!

Chats and Class Discussions

Both the partner chats and the team project chats are going really well. I am really liking typewith.me. It is such a great program for online collaboration. This week our group is also in charge of moderating the class discussion. We have our questions all figured out already which is great so now it's just a matter of responding to discussion from classmates. There are a few people in the class that write the longest responses! It's tough to read them because they are so long so I get discouraged from reading them. Other than that the class is going great. It's a ton of work but it's so applicable so it's actually fun to do the work!

Class Discussions = LOADS of Reading

I am finding the amount of reading on the class discussions a bit much. I find myself having to stop reading them as I lose my focus after only a few. I think it's because I feel anxious about having to reply instead of just enjoying the reading and posting a reply if I have something meaningful to add. Other than that I am finding the course really useful. I have already learned so many new technologies and I am eager to try them in the classroom. VoiceThread (group project) is already giving me ideas in the area of athletics. It would be great to review game tape on such a program. Or analyze a skill for a PE assignment. It's very cool!

So much work so little time...

The work is REALLY starting to build this week. I've started me group project, partner project and I need to start my individual project. It's a great deal of work in a short amount of time! Chat sessions have been going really well and the topics of each assignment are quite interesting and useful! I can see myself using everything so far in my teaching future. This makes the work much easier but it's still quite a lot. Anyways off to do some work!

First Chat Session

Team Earth had their first chat session last night and it went really well. We were organized, efficient and focused. Moving forward with viocethread and how to use it in an educational context. I still need to actually try to use it. I've only read about it. Looking froward to it though. Lots of work to do this week with this team assignment, partner assignments and my own assignment still to think about.

Smooth Sailing - so far...

I feel like my learning curve in this course just went on overdrive. I now feel comfortable with both the Blackboard activities and the C2C activities. It was definitely overwhelming at first as I was not sure where and when to post and I was fearful of missing something altogether but now that I have had some time to figure things out it does seem more so manageable for working. My team (Earth team) is having our first planned chat time tonight at 9pm. Should be interesting. I need to really look through voicethread before this meeting so that it's useful. Looking forward to getting this project started.

TypeWith.Me & Voicethread - Group Projects

We have started to collaborate on our group project and the first new technology that I am using is called typewith.me. It's works similar to a google doc but it is MUCH better. I find google docs to be quite slow and tedious. This program essentially is the same thing - you can create a document as a group and save it. It's free and it's easy. Next I am going to explore Voicethread which is going to be the focus of our group project. So far the members of my group seem to be nice and keen. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Blended Learning

I just finished an article review on blended learning. I found this article to be quite interesting probably because of it's relevance. The school where I teach is actually starting to implement a few blended learning courses for grades 11 and 12 in the math department. If it's a success I am sure the program will expand to other subjects as well. The article analyzed the perceived satisfaction from students in an undergraduate blended learning course. The results indicated that students were quite satisfied with blended learning. I suppose that's great news for my school! Here is a link to the article if anyone is interested. http://etec.hawaii.edu/proceedings/2011/Giannousi.pdf

Starting to get Busy

Starting week 2 and there is a ton of stuff to do! Team planning, partner planning, readings and this journal. I am struggling a bit with the team assignment. I am considered the "expert" in this group and I am not sure yet how I feel about that. I mean I know computers but I am not sure I would consider myself an expert. Anyways, off to do some readings. :)

Still Learning

It's been one week since this course started and I have started to become comfortable with the 3 different sites for this course. I still; however, find myself navigating from page to website, back to a different page. I find I am spending quite some time just navigating back and forth. I am still not sure how much I enjoy the set up. The information is all over the place and I am fearful that I am missing something. Other than that I enjoyed the first readings and as I do navigate from page to page I am finding resources or learning how to use a resource almost daily which is nice. Now that the work is probably going to pickup I really have to motivate myself to stay on a schedule.

What's Best: Online vs F2F

This weeks articles focused on the benefits of the online learning experience. I particularly enjoyed Kasslop's article which outlines 10 reasons why he feels online learning is a "sound arena for teaching and learning" ( http://technologysource.org/article/ten_ways_online_education_matches_or_surpasses_facetoface_learning/). Kasslop argues some realistic and accurate benefits to the online environment. I agree with most of his arguments. I do feel; however, he underestimates the skills of some classroom teachers in their ability to create student-centred learning and interactive discussions (for example). One cannot deny the importance and relevance of IT in the classroom but we also cannot deny the importance of F2F, experiential education, inesthetic learning, etc. that can only be done in F2F environments. In the end it is not a question of students learning as much or more online as they do F2F but which method of learning best suits their individual learning needs.

 

So Far So Good

This is my first journal entry for my class. So far I have quite enjoyed exploring how to create this very blog as part of our first assignment. I actually started it on Monday but I was having too much fun with all of the settings and design that I ran out of time to actually journal! I can see why teachers would use this in their teaching and I am starting to think up some ideas for my classes in September. So far the people in the class seem to be your typical grad school keeners just like me. The one thing that is a bit difficult is the number of on-line webpages we need to navigate through for this class. There is a course web page, OISE blackboard and C2C. That's right - THREE DIFFERENT PAGES. It just seems like a lot of places to search for whatever it is we are supposed to be doing. It may be too early to say this but having all of your information on ONE location would probably be much easier. I have also completed the readings for this week and they were quite interesting. I also found that I have lots to comment on! Off to Blackboard, or is it C2C, or is it the course webpage to complete my posts.