Reflections

What a learning experience this was! I learned to create a course in WebCT (I will be taking the class that teaches how to that this summer). I actually put everything I learned about facilitating an online course to the test. Overall I think I would have received a B for facilitation and maybe a B-- for design.

What did I learn from all of this and what will I do differently? A lot of what I learned and what I will do differently are tied together. I learned what can happen if you don't stress netiquette at the beginning of the course and will start every course with reading and a quiz on netiquette. I learned that people get upset when they miss the first week and can't catch up. So from now on, no late arrivals. Mainly I learned that I need to tweak the weekly lessons. So between now and June I will be making some changes to the course.

What will I remember the most from this course? The looks on their faces when they would tell me how proud they were that they accomplished the task for the week. The pride in their voices when they spoke of their accomplishments (because several of them didn't think they would be able complete the tasks). How several of them took what they learned and ran with it, one especially comes to mind: Pam's Genealogy Blog. I am proud of all of them.

Was it all fun and games? NO!!! Was it worth it? YES!!!! Will I be doing it again? Yes, starting in June.

See you in June!!!!!

Weeks 8, 9 and 10

A lot of time has elapsed and I am finally catching up. At the same time I was teaching this course I was taking an online course. To read about my experience in the Certificate in Online Teaching go to: http://thoughtsonline-roseypenguin.blogspot.com/ Now on with the course:

Week 8 was social networking where we covered MySpace and Facebook. The general consensus was that everyone seemed to prefer Facebook over MySpace. Facebook does seem to be older and more professional. Now that is not to say that you will not find teenagers on Facebook. As a matter of fact 4 of my friends are teenagers. As soon as I had added my nephew, two of his friends added me as well. The week we were studying social networking, MySpace was in the news (again!). We had a really good discussion on safety differences between the two with people posting links to articles about safety and tragedies. It was one of the better weeks.

Week 9 was podcasting and YouTube. We listed resources for them to go and listen to podcasts and then asked them to find library related videos to share. Some of the videos were a little off the mark, but hey, they tried. I created a podcast to show them how easy it was, I was hoping someone else would give it a try. But nobody was up to the challenge. It was a looooong week.

Week 10 was Second Life and a party. Yeah!!! All they had to do was sum up their experience and read about Second Life. They were not required to actually go create an account in Second Life. A couple of people did and last I heard they were having fun. The demonstration of Second Life hit a few snags. (It work perfectly during the dry run). I couldn't get Second Life to run, it took me about 20 minutes so I kept a running dialog and took questions. Then Sarah got stuck in a sitting position and couldn't stand up, wish I had taken pictures. We toured the Statue of Liberty, took a ferry ride (Sarah fell through the boat), visited the Sistine Chapel, and Information Island to see the libraries. Then it was on to pizza. Yeah!!!