Live Blog of Richardson's Speech

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Learning Online

Learning Online is such a HUGE topic and one that could span an entire semester (in fact it does in EDTEC 448!). However, we're going to take a couple of ours tonight to discuss this topic and all that we need to think about in order to make it a success. First, I have a short video clip for you to view just to get you thinking! Go to this blog and click play on the short video at the top. Then, scroll down to read the comments that people posted. How does this video clip shift your thinking about using WebQuests/NetQuests or other types of learning experiences on the Internet? What about multimedia in general? Does being able to "click" on text change things for students? As quoted in our Jonassen text, Morrison &Morgan (1999), state, "'We do not learn much from looking at a model - we learn a lot more from building the model and from manipulating it'". Does being able to click on something qualify as manipulating it? How?

In addition, we also need to think about how we will get our students online (conveniently) and what our students need to know in order to be successful with the online learning experience. There are many ways to do this, but I'd like to focus on three different methods of organizing online learning experiences. Tonight, we'll look at the following: a Word document, www.weebly.com, and www.wikispaces.com. Depending on your students and the type of learning experience, you could choose one of these tools.

Here are a few questions I want you to think about when planning online learning experiences:

1. What do your students need to know before going online?
   2. How will you get your students to "dig deeper" for online content?
   3. How do we get the students to further than, "But I found it on the Internet"?
   4. How do you teach them to search for information online? Visit here first.
   5. How do you teach them to evaluate the information they find online? Visit here first. Then, visit here.

Finally, to really get you thinking, here's what's coming with technology...Talk about being "clickable"!!

Symposium for Teaching and Learning With Technology at PSU

I’ve been thinking about this blog post since I left the Symposium for Teaching and Learning With Technology at PSU on Saturday afternoon. I am so excited about the community I’m part of at Penn State. Being an adjunct with Penn State Great Valley is very rewarding. I enjoy teaching classes there and have support from the Technology Department, Education Divison, and Library Services. However, I do feel a bit disconnected since I am not on campus everyday. I do a lot on my own to further my own professional development; twitter, blogs, online conferences, etc. I feel that I do have a very strong personal learning network. It still just isn’t the same as connecting with people who also teach at the University level. I’m used to attending conferences focusing on educational technology. Usually, those conferences are directed toward K-12 teachers. I’m always looking for a way to connect with those who teach higher level ed.

The Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology was a gathering of PSU professionals discussing teaching and learning at the University level (just what I’ve been looking for!). Every single presentation that I attended was about effective ways to use technology to enhance the teaching and learning process. More importantly, I feel as though I’ve made new “connections” with professionals at the University level. I added quite a few people to my learning network and noticed that a few others added me to their network. Since Saturday, I have been following them on Twitter and reading their blogs and I’ve already learned so much from them. I also read a very interesting blog post by Kyle Peck, which mirrors my thoughts about the PSU community. He invites us to work together to facilitate meaningful, higher level learning.

Specifically about the symposium, I enjoyed the presentation titled, “Engaging students with program learning outcomes using blogs” and will be implementing a few of the strategies they shared. Specifically, I will be teaching my students how to link the course learning outcomes to their blog tags. This will really help my students stay focused on their learning throughout the course.

I have many other ideas for how I will enhance my courses at PSGV. I will blog about them as I implement them into my teaching. I begin teaching EDTEC448 Using the Internet in the Classroom on May 5 so I’m excited to implement many of the new ideas that I have and also a lot of the strategies I spoke about in my presentation. For now, here is a link to my presentation from the TLT Symposium. It was entitled: University 2.0: Digital Innovations in the University Classroom. In addition, here is a link to the audio of my presentation.

I hope there are more learning opportunities in the near future so that I can continue to grow with these awesome educators! And, to all of those involved with the TLT Symposium, thanks for the opportunity!

(**I just noticed that they posted my video interview. I'm not liking it very much. I have to get better at "thinking on the fly"...it was my first interview in this format. Now that it's over, I have other ideas, things I wish I would have said, things I would have said differently, etc. I'm still learning, too!)