Synchronous Communication

Until now, I have considered online courses to be a low quality substitute for face to face classes – “real” school. Remember “mail order degrees”? Even our school is sugar-coating the concept. As we are assigned online course developments, we are reminded that some students aren’t able to attend face to face classes (the implication being that f2f is a superior delivery model), so we will offer this to a different market.

My online course development is primarily asynchronous, offering a variety of content uploaded to the site, a series of assignments submitted to drop boxes, discussion groups around the assignment submissions, online quizzes, and remote proctored final tests. I felt comfortable with this format based on my experience as a student in online courses. As a student, I concede I would not take the course if it wasn’t available on my own time in an online format. And, the asynchronous platform suited me well as a learner.

This week turned all that around for me! Participating in a short Collaborate session in which I could chit chat with other students before the class began (typing in chat function, or with audio/visual), and then finding myself fully engaged with the range of audio and visual functions presented was an amazing experience. I saw that connection and a sense of fun and belonging could exist in the online environment, and that it is greatly enhanced with the addition of a synchronous option. I am very excited at the possibilities for students who are struggling alone with an assignment and just need a little direct help over a small barrier – suddenly this is possible in an online course in a way that I hadn’t imagined.

Most of my classmates are in the US and seem familiar with these tools. I have taken some training previously but haven’t had motivation to use them. Now I am excited to offer them even in my face to face class. This way, I’ll be more practiced when the time comes to deliver an online course.

Later in the week, I used Skype along with a google doc. This allowed my partner and I to edit a document simultaneously, at the same time as we chatted in a sidebar, and could see and hear each other via Skype. It worked seamlessly, and once again, was fully engaging as there were a variety of things to be reading as we chatted and were able to see each other.

As a stark contrast, one day later I participated in an old-style conference call. I dialed in, entered my passcode, waited for other voices to join, and finally sat on the phone for 45 minutes with 6 participants. We referred to a hard copy document we had, but apart from that we had no visual content to the call. It was functional, but most certainly did not build rapport or a feeling of team the way the other tools had.

 

It's exciting to be learning to use these tools.

Lynn

I'm behind already! Google Reader no longer exists. I chose AOL Reader instead, and have my first blog uploaded.

Learning Technology

I'm an ordinary person, and I think slower than many to learn new things, especially things that involve technology. Many people in my world are dismissive of technological advances, focusing on the negatives - it's different from what they are used to, it's a time-waster, it's hard to learn, it doesn't seem to work when they try. I see it differently, and I've decided to become better at this. I want to appreciate technology, and all it can do for us. I want to develop a passion for learning and incorporating new technologies into my life. The learning process has always been exciting - and maddeningly frustrating!  There are many exciting possibilities and directions for both my personal life and my work life. Also fear that if I don't work to learn them, I will get left far behind and unable to learn in my late age.

I have sons in their twenties, young students, and a brand new baby granddaughter. I hope to keep in touch with their lives by immersing myself more in new technologies.

Today I read an exciting article talking about using and writing blogs. He uses an aggregator to track the blogs he follows, and spends 20 minutes every morning catching up on updates. Waste of time? Time you don't have? How many minutes per day do many people still spend reading the newspaper, whether or not the content interests them? This is an opportunity to have daily items of interest, presented, because you selected it.

The author writes enthusiastically about exchanges of ideas, pushing his thoughts, being pushed on his thoughts.

My next stop is to reader.google.com to load up some blogs of interest for me. Writing a blog is more intimidating, until I realize that I have started doing exactly that, with this post.

For now, I am not thinking about anyone following my blog. I hope they don't. But maybe in time I'll be better, and someone might find something I write to be of interest to them.

Over and out.