Digital Media for Teaching and Learning

I am currently taking Digital Media for Teaching and Learning.  Since I teach a similar semester-long online course, I am interested in how they structure the course and which projects they have designed.  I also hope to meet other second language teachers to add to my personal learning network.

What I find especially intriguing is that this MOOC (as I understand it) has been designed by graduate students of Dr. Torrey Trust.  Talk about project-based learning!  What a fantastic idea - to have your own students learn about web design by creating something that can be of real benefit to others around the world.

Plurk and Shelfari

I have been trying out Plurk for a few weeks, but was having difficulty finding friends who were not already in my email or Twitter accounts. I've finally mastered the art of finding friends, but it only seems to work if they use their real names and not an ID. Here are the steps:

• Click My friends.
• At bottom of page click Find or invite some friends.
• In the Search for other plurkers box, put the name (ID) of the person you are looking for.
• Under their name to go to their plurk timeline.
• Click on either Add ... as a friend or Follow ...as a fan. (I have to check out the difference).

On a different topic, I recently discovered that someone from the Yahoo group Learning with Computers has started a group on Shelfari. This may be a good site to talk about books for professional development.

Leaving Voice Message on a Blog

I was looking for a widget to put on this blog that would allow visitors to leave an audio message. So I asked for input from the friendly members of Learning with Computers. From their speedy replies this is what I discovered about their suggestions:
· Evoca seemed to be the best option for what I was looking for. It is now installed on this blog. I'm interested to see how well it functions.
· Odeo seemed to be more for creating podcasts and I wanted viewers to record, not listen.
· Chinswing is a cool little tools but didn't seem to be made for putting on one's own site.
· MyChingo is no longer free.
· Qlipboard didn't seem to be for a blog viewer to record on, although it looked like an interesting tool to check out some time. While searching for Qlipboard, I did find a useful blog post by Ronaldo Lima, Jr. in which he compared Qlipboard, VoiceThread and Splashcast. I liked his site and have added it to my rss feeds.

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge

Tangled Web by Gruno Girin

There will be an exciting experiment of an open online course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes in Septmeber. The details of the course show that it covers the following topics through various techological means:
Week 1: What is Connectivism?
Week 2: Rethinking epistemology: Connective knowledge
Week 3: Properties of Networks
Week 4: History of networked learning
Week 5: Connectives and Collectives: Distinctions between networks and
groups
Week 6: Complexity, Chaos and Research
Week 7: Instructional design and connectivism
Week 8: Power, control, validity, and authority in distributed environments
Week 9: What becomes of the teacher? New roles for educators
Week 10: Openness: social change and future directions
Week 11: Systemic change: How do institutions respond?
Week 12: The Future of Connectivism

I'm very much looking forward to the course which starts in September. However, since my own courses start at that time, I'm trying to do as much reading as possible beforehand.

Networking

The new semester is quickly approaching and I'm trying to finish revising the syllabi for my fall 07 courses. I do so much reading and experimenting with new tools that I learn about through online networking that it is hard to decide what to include and what to leave out.

I always assume that the students in my classes will learn about principles of teaching and learning in other courses. So what I try to do in my courses is offer them the opportunity to become familiar with free-online tools that they can utilize to apply these principles and to make their professional lives more fruitful.

I am always hopeful that the students will end up learning how useful it is in today's digital world to become part of a digital community of practice. Such a network can be a great source of inspiration and a good place to offer and receive feedback on ideas. My present network can be seen in this Gliffy visualization.

This summer has been soooo busy that I haven't had as much time as usual to work on revisions, but next week I plan to finish up. This summer has included learning how to take care of a 14-year-old cocker spaniel who suffers from separation anxiety; marketing/selling my condo; putting almost everything I own in storage; moving in with my son and daughter-in-law, putting their town house on the market and planning and building a new home together. Whew!