Week 12: Mid Year Self Assessment

Week 1: Introduction, setting up my blog, setting up Diigo, visiting others blogs

I made a start with this course slowly by making a number of entries into my blog after setting it up.  I consider myself a non-creative person so looking at what others do is the best way I learn about new tools.  As this course has progressed, I keep having to remind myself to add links to Diigo rather than creating pdf of the pages!  I also think Diigo would be a useful activity for out IT students to create as part of the IT Orientation week.

Week 2: Teaching and Learning Online, reflection on RSS

I found this a very useful exercise about RSS as I didn’t know what it was.  I am hoping we can use this tool as part of our orientation week activities for IT students next year as I think it would be great for them to use it themselves.

Week 3: Pedagogy and Course Design

An interesting week in looking at what my pedagogy is and has allowed me to reflect on the way in which I teach.  I am always trying to make it more student centred.

Week 4: Materials for Online and Prezi presentation

Ahhh the Prezi tool.  My initial experimentation wasn’t very good and I wondered how I could use it.  But, as I said in week 1’s comment above, I need to be introduced to an idea first.  After letting the ideas percolate for a while, I did come up with a useful Prezi presentation for my students and I even took the opportunity to discuss its use with the students present on the day I used it.  A very interesting conversation and, I think, a new tool for my toolkit.

Week 5: The Online Syllabus

I haven’t found this week’s concept as useful as other weeks mainly because I’m not teaching an online course.  However, I do see some implications for my f2f classes and I will keep working on this for these courses.

Week 6: Creating Presentations and getting Jing to work in WordPress

Jing, that useful tool but the frustrations of getting it into WordPress.  I’m not sure if I will carry on using this tool because of the 5 minute limitation for recording (but maybe that is the reason why I should use it!) and the difficulty of uploading to WordPress.  I think I will carry on using BBFlashback Express because it doesn’t have the previous limitations.  I am teaching Office 2010 next year and I think video presentations will be useful for that.

Week 7: The Online Classroom

This wasn’t a very successful week for me.  I did set up a conversation point on Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy which was useful for me as well, and I did comment on a few of the other’s blogs but I found it hard to remember to go in and check and also to find the others blogs which would be useful to comment on.

Week 8: Creating Community and Symbaloo of online teaching tools

Feeling like I wasn’t really contributing in these 2 weeks, and liking the Symbaloo of the participants prepared by Norm (I think it was) I decided to put together one on the Teaching Tools.  The other reason I put it together was after talking to my workmate, Clare who said she didn’t have time to play with everything – so I decided to put it together in one place.

I was proud in being able to join the synchronous session this week.  It happened to be at a good time and while I was on holiday.  I can see the importance of recording making these sessions available at later times so all students can feel part of the course.

Week 9: Student Activities

I took the opportunity to join 2 others in Second Life.  I have been involved with Second Life before but hadn’t used the voice system so that was good.  I had a look at the MERLOT resources for IT items but want to come back to this again later (I see that week 12 covers this area further).

Week 10: Open Platforms for Teaching and Learning

Now is a good time to reflect on Blogs.  I can see there use in courses and in fact I have had a conversation with some of my students on the use of blogs for progress reports which I have required from one of my courses this year.  By trying new things in a student mode, I am prompted to think about the student side of the activities and I feel it is important to ask students there thoughts as well.

This course has also encouraged me to finally set up a website for the tutorials I have put together over the years.  With the move to Office 2010 next year, I can see I will be putting together more tutorials.  By including them on an external webpage, I can easily maintain the resources while still providing access through the formal Moodle system.

Week 11: Class Resources and Intellectual Property

Copyright has international implications but each country deals with it differently.  I focussed on the NZ copyright issues.

Week 12: Resources Online / Mid-year Self-Assessment Check

I was unwell for this week and also had to manage marking as it is the end of the semester and academic year in NZ.  I fully intend on doing this section before the course restarts in February

Overall Thoughts

I see from reviewing my posts that a lot of them are related to reflections of my own teaching practices.  I have tried to add other links at times and make more use of the Blog by adding some thoughts on my use of my new iPad.

I have tried to read the textbook each week and most weeks I have been successful – or else I read it the following week.  I have read and listened to the various links and have made a few notes as I have gone where I have felt the need to.  I have been enjoying this course and the opportunity to find new resources.

I will be back in February!!