Wk 8 - 6105

In our readings this week I read a research article done by Jung in 2005. Summing it up very briefly they compared the cost-effectiveness of online teacher training to face-to-face instruction. They found that the online teacher training was more cost effective than face-to-face instruction. However, the face-to-face instruction was more effective. They gave a couple of reasons for this. The one that stood out to me was "... the absences of online pedagogies" (Jung, 2005, p. 145). "This supports the results of previous studies in which instructional design, rather than technology itself, has been found to be a key factor in making differences in learning" (Jung 2005, p.145). These two phrases really jumped off the page for me. We, as teachers, need to be aware that what may work fabulously in the classroom probably won't have the same effectiveness in an online setting. As we prepare online courses, we need to be educated ourselves in online pedagogies and best practices for the online classroom to facilitate student learning and not solely rely on what works in a face-to-face environment.

Wk 7 - 6105

The presentation I watched this week was on PowerPoint. I thought I knew all I needed to know about PowerPoint, but Marc did an excellent job of showing the many capabilities of the tool. The presentation made me think of all the PowerPoint's that I have created in the past. I started out really well making them thought provoking and all, but recently I have become lazy and just put bullet points up. It reminded me that I need to capture the attention of my students and keep them engaged. I need to do a better job. Looks like I'll be revamping quite a few of my PowerPoint's to make them more student friendly.

Wk 7 - 6105

This week our class read an article about the trends of distance education. The article mostly focused on wiki's, blogs, and pod-casting. I post daily to my teaching blog on what activities we did in class that day. Wiki's I am a little more concerned about. I totally see there use in higher education where students are a little more mature. One of the class members (in the discussion group) related a story of a friend that had a class wiki and a student went to it and changed it to say derogatory remarks about another student. I can see that being a big issue in the k-12 setting. I know on my school blog, if anyone wants to post a comment, I have is set up that a email is sent to me first to either approve or delete the comment. That is one of the things our districts' appropriate use policy (AUP) stresses that we as teachers are responsible for EVERYTHING posted on our blog including student comments. So we have to take appropriate measures to block unwanted comments/material from appearing on anything school related.

Wk 6 - 6105

As I read about open courseware and how teachers and students could benefit from it, I thought to look up MIT's offerings for math and psychology. Most of the math classes were above what would be taught in a high school setting. (As I thought about it, you are probably not going to MIT if you need Math 950.) Their lowest offering was for Calculus and since I don't teach Calculus it is not going to do me much good. However, as I was researching psychology, they do offer quite a few courses for it. This could be a great resource to develop my skills as a psychology teacher. I was just playing around for about an hour and came up with all sorts of ideas I could use next year. For example, I feel I do not do enough cooperative learning in my class and one of the classes I looked at was read this article and discuss it within your group. I think it would be great for me to hand out some of those articles for my students to read and then have them discuss in small groups.

I also looked at USU's open courseware. They only had a doctoral level class for psychology and there was a math 1050 offering, but none of the links worked. I'll have periodically check back to see if there is more for psych or math.

Wk 6 - 6105

This week I learned about 2 new technologies. Slide Rocket and UStream. UStream looks like it has a lot of functionality and could have huge benefits for distance education and face to face education. However, for me right now it is not a reality because I don't have a camera. I don't have personal funds for one and my department is strapped for money. We have to buy our own batteries for our calculators.

Slide Rocket looked like it could create amazing slide shows that are a step above PowerPoint. However, it is only a 30-day free trial and then you have to pay. I can see my administrators saying that PowerPoint is "good enough". So I'm afraid that this week, I can't really use what I learned. However it is good to have it in the back of my head for future references.

Wk 5 - 6105

I just watched the workshop for Skype. While I have heard of it, it was great to see how it could be used in the classroom. For psychology next year, I am going to see if I can get some professionals to "visit" class via Skype. It cuts on transportation costs and time away from work for the professional. It has the potential to be a very useful tool.

Wk 5 - 6105

So I learned this week about Google Calendar. I am a big fan of the syllabus so I know what is going on for the whole semester and since my undergraduate work, I've always transferred what was on the syllabus to a monthly calendar to keep track of everything. If I have a spare minute, I'm going to transfer all the stuff from my paper calendar to the Google calendar. This is a great tool for students to utilize.

But I wanted to focus my attention to how a teacher could use this for distance education and since you can share the calendar with others, why not create a calendar for a class instead of a syllabus. I would prefer that if I was a student. Also since you can add a detailed description to any event or task, you can add all the pertinent information. Some details may need to be worked out, but I think it is a great idea.

On a side note. . . What would we do without Google nowadays? I don't think I know how to research any other way :)