EDUC3325 - Week Eight Reflections

This was a transition week - as the students finished off their Web Portfolios and began their first group assignment - WebQuests.

Once again, I was impressed that all students in the course - finished their Portfolios. The quality of the feedback they provided each other with on this assignment was much richer this semester. I think this is due to the fact that almost all the students have been using their Blogs on a regular basis to relfect about each of the course assignments.

The students formed 4 groups for the WebQuest assignment with ease. The peer review component of the Portfolio assignment - really has prepared the students to work collaboratively to create their WebQuests.

We only had class on Monday night as I flew to Orlando, Florida on Tuesday for the Academic Impressions - Building Online Learning Communities conference. Randy Garrison and I facilitated 3 sessions for this conference. The associated PowerPoint presentations can be found on my personal Web page. The conference was located at the Hilton Hotel in Walt Disney World - right across from Downtown Disney. Let's see if I can share a few photos with you?


Tunde and I enjoying a Japanese dinner


It seems that you can make Mickey Mouse out of just about anything!!

EDUC3325 - Week Seven Reflections

This is always the toughest week of the semester from my perspective but this year was not too bad. I think this is due to a combination of factors. One, the web editing tool (nvu.com) and the file transfer procedure (geocities.com) are getting easier to use. Two, I have a much smaller class than usual.

Anyways, we did a brief introduction to the various types of telecommunication systems on Monday and then spent the remainder of the evening creating geocities.com sites and uploading the initial Webfolio files. Wednesday most of the students completed their sites and posted their reflections about the process to their Weblogs.

Each of the students randomly selected someone else's Webfolio to conduct a peer review (What did you learn from the site?; What were the strengths of the site?; Suggestions for improvement). Just checking in on the Weblogs today - I notice that not many students have begun this peer review process. Fingers-crossed that they'll provide each other with formative feedback before our next class on Monday Oct 23rd.

EDUC3325 - Week Six Reflections

Wowsa,

We're almost half way through the semester - time just seems to "fly" these days.

This week the education students began to post reflections on their blogs about their lesson plan, spreadsheet and PowerPoint assignments. These reflections are focused on the following two questions for each assignment:

1. What did you learn in the process of completing this assignment?
2. How will you apply what you learned from this assignment to the next class assignment, other courses and/or your career?

The remainder of the evening was spent on ensuring that the internal and external hyperlinks were functional on everyone's Web Portfolio. Next week we'll be posting these portfolios to geocities.com so that students can begin conducting their peer reviews before submitting them to me for assessment.

In other news, students have begun posting the weekly online discussion summaries to our course wiki. Wow, so much for writely.com - Google has now packaged this product with an online spreadsheet application called Google Docs & Spreadsheets - what a combination with blogger.com - watch out Microsoft :)

EDUC3325 - Week Five Reflections

Ooops,

With the Canadian Thanksgiving Day weekend I kinda got a week behind on my ITBL blog entries.

This actually was a BIG week as the EDUC3325 students began their Web-based portfolio assignment. The goal of the assignment is to provide the students with a an opportunity to create their own learning portfolio. This portfolio process allows them to reflect on their learning at Mount Royal College and it also creates a "space" that they can continue to build upon when they transfer to the University of Calgary, University of Alberta or the University of Lethbridge to complete their studies. We're using "free" tools to create the portfolios - nvu.com is the Web editor and geocities.com is where the sites are being hosted. Examples of previous student work can be found at EDUC3325- Winter 2006.

In other news - the students have begun to collaboratively post their online discussion summaries on our EDUC3325 Wiki. The discussion this week is particularly interesting - Transforming the Learning Experience. Jenn Poor is moderating the discussion and she has asked everyone to complete Don Pratt's Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) so that we can discuss the congruency between our teaching practices and our learning preferences.