OL 101 Blog - Muller

The new technology this week was definitely a challenge for me - and I'm normally one who catches on to new things pretty quickly.  I guess I can now say that I understand what some of my students go through - both kids and adults! I really liked VoiceThread and Screencast.  Audacity was okay once I figured out all that I needed to download.  But after doing the voice recording, I think I would almost rather take a video of myself rather than just hear my voice! I do think that I will definitely be using Screencast or a simple video recording to introduce any new Modules.  In my opinion, having my online students "see me" at the beginning of each week is almost a must.  This gives them more of a sense of community and I can now see how that will work. I also think offering the F2F lab session is a great idea.  I could not attend this week's with Rick, but possibly offering something like that via Skype might be feasible.  Or the students and I co...

When I was first asked to teach a new class at Trinity that would be online, I immediately jumped at the chance!  Then I was told that I would need to take "How to Teach Online" before actually doing it.  Then I was informed that the teaching of my new online class would begin only 1.5 weeks after starting the "How to Teach Online."  Imagine my anxiety! So here I am almost one week into taking the class, and 5 days out from teaching the class.  The writing of the Learner's Guide for my new course was easy.  I had guidelines and ideas, but how do I write easily understood instructions for people I probably wouldn't ever "see?"  So I started doing what I thought was best.  Then I received Rick's  Getting Started in OL101  and my heart sunk just a little.  I had incorporated what I thought were great ideas, readings and assignments.  I used Moodle databases, quizzes, assignments, links, etc.   But now how do I create a sense of ...