Today, my second MOOC starts, E-learning and Digital Cultures by the University of Edinburgh #edcmooc. First product of this course, my new blog. I've never tried to blog before, so here goes.
I've been teaching online courses for 10 years now, and I'm a tech junkie - I'll admit it. I'm always prowling for the newest gadgets, apps, and programs for myself and to engage my online students. Ask an online student what their number one complaint is with online courses and they'll tell you it's the lack of interaction, of feeling like they belong to a community like the F2F (face-to-face) classroom. That's a hard thing to simulate online, but I try.
To date, I've gamified courses using badges, added twitter feeds to courses, and used Polleverywhere in courses to try and facilitate interaction. I'm in this MOOC to broaden my own horizons and learn more ways to engage the students, plus I love TECH and social media! I said that already, didn't I? Here's to the next 4 weeks...
**The picture at the top of the post is a Wordle (a website that generates word clouds from text, giving greater prominence to words that appear more often. This shot is from the EDC MOOC news RSS feed today. **
I've been teaching online courses for 10 years now, and I'm a tech junkie - I'll admit it. I'm always prowling for the newest gadgets, apps, and programs for myself and to engage my online students. Ask an online student what their number one complaint is with online courses and they'll tell you it's the lack of interaction, of feeling like they belong to a community like the F2F (face-to-face) classroom. That's a hard thing to simulate online, but I try.
To date, I've gamified courses using badges, added twitter feeds to courses, and used Polleverywhere in courses to try and facilitate interaction. I'm in this MOOC to broaden my own horizons and learn more ways to engage the students, plus I love TECH and social media! I said that already, didn't I? Here's to the next 4 weeks...
**The picture at the top of the post is a Wordle (a website that generates word clouds from text, giving greater prominence to words that appear more often. This shot is from the EDC MOOC news RSS feed today. **
"The tipping point occurs when learning replaces instruction, participation replaces presentation, and questions become more important than answers."
-P. Block