It's Saturday morning and I'm messing with my computers thinking about 675 and how to structure the course. One of the exciting parts of teaching about the Internet is, as I said in the last post, it is always changing. My thoughts this morning are that I need to be a facilitator more than a teacher in this course. That is as the old saying goes, 'A guide on the side, not a sage on the stage'. The role I hope to take in 675 is to point you in a direction that fulfills your needs in the course and let you explore and create products that are useful to you in your work. When I looked at the responses to the Blackboard survey (11 of 17 have responded) it was almost everyone's first choice of what they wanted to learn was material that could be used in the classroom right away. In order to meet that mandate I must depend on you to take the raw material we discover on the Internet and massage it into classroom ready lessons. This work will take a joint effort... my knowledge and creativity in knowing and finding what I think is interesting stuff and your skill and creativity in making it classroom ready.
My hope is that 675 will stretch you outside your comfort zone, grow not only your Internet skills but energize and engage your creative instincts to go where other teachers have not gone (at least not very often).
I didn't mention it in the text of the first blog post but at the bottom of the post is a link to a video about creating your own blog (that will be Project #1).
I'll add info about our meetings here but will also send an email:
To: Candidates Enrolled in EDUC 675, Spring, 2008
CC: Office of Graduate Studies
Office of the Registrar
David Heigle, Course Instructor
From: Katherine Reichley, Professional Education Unit Coordinator
Re: Meeting Dates
Date: October 29, 2007
Message:
Although EDUC 675-OL is an online course, the instructor, David Heigle, has elected to hold two sessions on campus. They are as follows:
Wednesday, April 2, 2008, 7:00-9:00 p.m., Roush 204
Wednesday, April 16, 2008, 7:00-9:00 p.m., Roush 204
Mr. Heigle can be reached at dheigle@otterbein.edu if you have any questions about the course.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
EDUC 675: The Beginning
EDUC 675 Sp. '08
Things have changed. The last time I taught 675 was in Spring term 2007 and we (Dr. Kilbane and I team taught the course) couldn't find an appropriate text for the course, the tools we wanted to use with students were scattered across the web and were of uneven quality and user friendliness. We experienced some 'do-overs' when a survey didn't return the results we were looking for, for example. This year we have a text that is up to date (as the printed word can be in the new era), and many of the tools we will use are clustered under the Google umbrella. If you are reading this you have undoubtedly been able to log into the Google world and now have a gmail account.
Good for you! The first project, and an ongoing one, is to create your own blog right here in blogger.com. This will be your course journal where you will enter weekly (or more often) accounts of your learning arc/ramp/spiral. You will be able to demonstrate and teach others what you have learned by writing about your journey AND by adding elements to your blog and by linking to interesting sites.
One really great thing about web tools is that they are 'self-teaching', that is, they have good step-by-step directions and often even video that explains how to create and use the various features. I encourage you to take advantage of all the provided instructions before asking for help from classmates or from me.
Welcome to a new world of teaching and learning. We will be fellow travelers on this vast highway to new ways of engaging students and to growing our own expertise. No one person can know/imagine what lies in wait on Web 2.0 but together we can explore, create, improvise, implement, authenticate, debunk better than any individual.
Things have changed. The last time I taught 675 was in Spring term 2007 and we (Dr. Kilbane and I team taught the course) couldn't find an appropriate text for the course, the tools we wanted to use with students were scattered across the web and were of uneven quality and user friendliness. We experienced some 'do-overs' when a survey didn't return the results we were looking for, for example. This year we have a text that is up to date (as the printed word can be in the new era), and many of the tools we will use are clustered under the Google umbrella. If you are reading this you have undoubtedly been able to log into the Google world and now have a gmail account.
Good for you! The first project, and an ongoing one, is to create your own blog right here in blogger.com. This will be your course journal where you will enter weekly (or more often) accounts of your learning arc/ramp/spiral. You will be able to demonstrate and teach others what you have learned by writing about your journey AND by adding elements to your blog and by linking to interesting sites.
One really great thing about web tools is that they are 'self-teaching', that is, they have good step-by-step directions and often even video that explains how to create and use the various features. I encourage you to take advantage of all the provided instructions before asking for help from classmates or from me.
Welcome to a new world of teaching and learning. We will be fellow travelers on this vast highway to new ways of engaging students and to growing our own expertise. No one person can know/imagine what lies in wait on Web 2.0 but together we can explore, create, improvise, implement, authenticate, debunk better than any individual.
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