Courses like this "force" me to explore tools that I haven't used yet. Force is a strong word, I know. I really want to learn these tools but I never find the time with my tight schedule. Being here is making me do this. Thank you.
Now, what I am learning. I am forming a preference for some tools over other ones. It's only natural, I guess. We seem to be using a great deal of them in this class. Some of them are natural for me to check often (Moodle, blogs, links to tools in profile) while others I need to discipline myself to go there (NING, Google Groups, CMSimple).
Blogging - This is my favorite. I have blogs of specific classmates that I read religiously. They introduce the topics in such an interesting way.
Wiki-ped/tion/versity - I use these resources more than I ever care to admit and I will continue to use them, but I still will not encourage my students to use it as a primary source. Maybe one day. I did enjoy seeing how easy it was to add information to these sites, but like several students have mentioned in their comments this week, I did not feel like I should be adding anything to the sites. I am a jack of many trades, but an expert in just a few.
Second Life - I met DI and several of my classmates there one night after work to explore how Second Life works. It's an interesting place and has a lot of potential, but I still have some profound concerns. It has a steep learning curve. DI came to our school and taught a 2-hour session on Second Life. It took us 2 hours to learn how to create our avatar, move around and create some basic things. You will not grab the masses with this tool if it takes that long to learn the interface. If a 8-year-old boy can put a video game in a console and learn it in less than 30 minutes, Second Life has some issues regarding its learning curve. Also, you do need a healthy computer with a strong connection to the Internet to make this work. The background is constantly rendering. If your computer is not up to par, you will struggle a bit on Second Life.
Wordles - These things are addictive. They have a pretty end result but not sure how I could incorporate it in an online classroom except maybe an interesting approach to summarizing the class topics for the students at the beginning of the semester.
Google Image Labeler (and tools such as that) - Yikes. I am completely addicted. I played Tag a Tune to the point that I was the top of the high score board. It was a moment of complete pride and immediate "oh no, I am that person"! The resource provided before the exercise talked about human computation and the number of work hours people spend on these tools. That was striking, but what got me was how Google solved a problem with an opportunity. They found a way to get other people to provide them information freely with systems in place to verify the information.
The resources have been very interesting and I have already passed several of them to other people to share what I have learned. I am enjoying this class. Unfortunately, my work schedule is tight and I can only log in extensively on the weekends.
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I don't encourage students to use wikipedia as a primary source either. Mostly because it's not a primary source historically speaking. But I do encourage them to use it as a starting place to get and overview (I tell them to use their text book the same way). Then I tell them to go out and find more information that either confirms, contradicts, or complicates their textbook or wikipedia. This seems to expose them to more information and allows them to make critical thinking decisions about what the think is plausible.
ReplyDeleteI am also finding that I have preferences as well. I can really see how some will always stay with me, but there are others that the exposure to the application was enough.
ReplyDeleteThe Second Life thing is interesting, but does have a steep learning curve. I was in Ed McKay's used books and actually found a book on SL. Maybe it was fate - Go figure. LOL