Week 9: Finishing the lessons

I was so pleased and excited to see the curriculum units that people created. There went way beyond my expectations, both in terms of completeness and complexity. Some great examples of Web 2.0 tool use, including some at least partially developed their ideas (like the history game and the use of animation and sound to teach tones in Chinese--this is the first time I've actually understood that!), as well as great uses of Ning (which has caught on so quickly and which, with a deft hand, can be used almost as well as Moodle for an entire curriculum), very creative use of other people's resources (simulations in physics and games in Greek history), and tools that I didn't know existed (WizIQ). Every one had many good ideas embedded in it, plus there was a lot of good instructional design theory thrown in.

What they all--and we--lack was one environment that would embrace all the tools, making it so much easier to use them.

I had deliberately said that people should work in pairs because of past experience with the difficulties of coordinating larger groups in a short period of time, but the psychology of it led to larger groups. In addition, I saw the same problem that the high school kids have, which is that you have more problems if you don't get your entire group organized early (in other words, stragglers make it more difficult). That said, curriculum units, in the end, everyone seems to have managed well, although the smaller groups seem to have created slightly more coherent curriculum, probably because they did not have to split the work in the same way (i.e., they could work together more easily). I am therefore still inclined not to encourage larger groups, just because it adds to the burden.

One of the students wrote in her blog about what she has learned about working in groups from working in a big international company. That made me think that we could have benefited from her experience if I had thought about it beforehand--but I didn't put it all together. And that reminded me that one of the IB online teachers has each student lead one discussion forum each week, posing their own question for other students to answer. Some version of that might be possible--for instance, if a student had experience in some area that he/she felt would benefit other students. Perhaps the way to do this would be to solicit volunteers, not forcing people but allowed those who have experience the opportunity to pass it along.

Lots to think about.

Week 7

This was the week to find partners for the curriculum design project. I think there must be a better way to do that than using the discussion forum--perhaps the wiki. The different time zones and different schedules made it take longer and added confusion. It also turned out to be difficult to keep it to pairs. I think pairs would be easier on everyone, so we will have to watch and see how the larger groups do.

I also had no idea how many Web 2.0 tools there are out there. Next time, I think I will take a week to explore those tools from a pedagogical perspective.

One of the advantages of teaching (or taking) an online course is that you can be anywhere in the world. This is where I am:

Week 6: Intense week

This was a very intense week, not only because I fell behind last week but because there was so much discussion this week on the topic of student-student interaction. This in turn led to a whole lot of discussion about discussions. I probably made an error in having this week's discussion forum open to all (i.e., not two groups) but I did that because in previous weeks, the discussion in the smaller groups seemed uneven, to the detriment of people who posted early. However, this turned out to be a topic that everyone could relate to so the posts came hard and fast.

No one, least of all me, is happy with the Moodle discussion forum. It is very hard to follow, I think actually harder than Blackboard because of the way the forums are broken up. I am not sure what to do about this--I think it will take some in-depth analysis of what has actually happened in the different forums for me to decide if I think they are working or not.

What I see in the blogs this week, though is that all the discussion and examining of different aspects of virtual schools over the past couple of weeks has led many students to change their views about the schools they looked at. This is what I had hoped would happen. As the distinctions between the types of schools are becoming clearer, I see much more accurate use of terminology, as well as less excitement and at the same time less being taken in by the glitch of some of the schools' presentations of themselves. Now the challenge is to figure out the potential strengths of these schools and how we build on them.