For our latest assignment, I read the Michigan Merit Curriculum Online Experience Guideline Companion Document. This helped me learn about online learning and it's usefulness in my classroom.
One of the technologies that is an online experience that I'd like to use with my students would be a videocast/podcast. What I'd like to do is begin to tape my lectures and then upload them to my class website so students can download links to what I talked about in class. This could be very helpful to students who miss my class - or to students who just want to hear everything again. I think that lecture is something that kids either get or they don't - and it's difficult to make up - even if the students have the notes. Missing out on stories, anecdotes and information cant be made up by just copying down another student's notes.
What's great about video or podcasts is that it would help me teach just about any lesson. If I were able to record instruction, students would be able to play it back, or download it anywhere
I think there are many teaching strategies that you could use - and they all differ depending on what online technology you use. If you create a podcast, you could provide guided notes. If you had a webquest, you could provide the students with questions to answer. If I used a blog, I could have my students comment on it, and read the posts of others and agree or disagree. The possibilities are limitless, like the technologies that are available.
I think some technologies that may be harder to use would be Moodle and Blackboard. At our school, we have issues with large sites and download times aren't too fast. I hate getting involved with programs that make students log in. It always seems to take forever.
Thanks Tom for your thoughtful post about the MME online experience. There are several programs which you can use to 'tape' your lectures - but sometimes they can take too long for a student to listen through. If you did it with Camtasia Studio you could put in markers and use them like a TOC. Or, as you record, keep them to 15-20 min specific to a topic you are covering. Podcasts can include pdf files which can come by RSS feed too. Actually Blackboard and Moodle are very efficient and effective to use as blended learning environments for your classroom, but you can do almost as much with your blog. Discussion forums are really nice for the students, perhaps you'd use some other tool for that.
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I think you should have mentioned how recording your lecture can help you improve your teaching and student interaction. Nothing like hearing your own irritation at a miss behaving student. It does happen every now and then. ^o^
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