NTLS + Communication

I am beginning this post with evidence that I was in Washington DC last week!  A few of us arrived early to finish planning the 2008 National Technology Leadership Summit and took a  few hours off for a Segway tour of DC.   the people with me are professors in instructional technology  from Australia(long beard), Texas and Virginia.

New Literacies and better connecting informal learning (outside of school) and formal learning were the major topics for the Summit.  There seems to be general agreement (at least among this group!) that we need to do a better job of building connections to the technology-rich outside school lives of many students and what happens in school.

As I think about 505 thus far, I know that we have several lines for communication within the course: discussion sections, this blog, office hours, email, weekly videos, weekly agendas.  I am wondering if we have too many channels for communication or if these channels are working for you.  I am interested in your perceptions of which channels are most and least useful.  I am also interested in your suggestions for additional methods of communication  that you might find useful.

One thing that occurs to me is that we do not have much opportunity to communicate in an informal way.  In a face to face class, there are always before and after (and sometimes during) class chats.  I wonder if you miss that and if so, if you could suggest ways to make this happen.

                                                               

Logo and Blogging Assignments

Now that WebCT is up and running again, I am catching up on my paper grading.  I wanted to be sure that students received some feedback on their blogging assignments, since several later assignments use the same approach.  In general, most students were clear and learner=centered in the assignment they posed for their students.  The best assignments emphasized the opportunity for students to interact with each other on the blog and thus had a clear value added for using blogging.  Similarly, the strongest assignments also encouraged student reflection on a topic.  In general, most students provided a concrete example of what an entry might look like for students.  Several of you used ePals for your blog format and several commented that some schools do not allow blogging right now.

The Logo assignments were generally strong, with clear, well-organized procedures and one calling super-procedure.  The most common error was the failure to write a super-procedure using Logo syntax.  The HOUSE example on page 116 of Mindstorms is a good example of a Logo super procedure.

I am concerned that WebCT let us down, especially since we are just beginning to establish our course procedures and routines.  I have used WebCT for several years and this is the first time I have experienced a major problem or a lengthy shutdown.  I am hopeful that we will all recover from this interruption.  I entered my Logo comments in the gradebook, rather than the assignment area, and I am not sure that students will be able to read the comments.  We will figure out this part, however, and you will get your comments!

6,298 Hits Last Week!!

WEBCT has a tracking option that allows me to track student use of the site.  Given the distant nature of our relationship, this feature provides interesting (and in the case of this class reassuring) evidence of our connections.

For example, with one exception, every student in the class visited our site and the schedule on Monday.  Since I envision everyone viewing the agenda and video on Mondays, this is good news to me.  And the one student who was not there on Monday visited early Tuesday....

We have had 6,298 hits from Sept. 2-Sept. 9 (one week)---that is an average of about 330 hits per student.  And (not to worry) a hit means that you have visited a discussion, an annoucement, the schedule, the video, a resource, etc.  Thus, in a typical site visit, most of us will make several hits.

For the same one week period, we had 249 visits to our WEBCT site---that means each student visited about 15 times or about twice a day.

For those of you who like numbers----7pm-8pm is our most frequented hour and 2am-3am is our least frequented hour (thank goodness).  Sept. 8 was our heaviest use day so far.

And to move away from numbers to substance, I am very pleased with our beginnings.  The discussions are active; students are using and illustrating our readings; Aaron got us off to a good start with software reviews and even asked the group to be a little metacognitive about the process; we had a good turn out at office hours last week and a good chance to answer questions, especially for our students who added the course a bit late.

Thanks to all of you for getting us off to an active, informed start!

Our Discussions Begin!

Beginning today, September 2, we will start our online discussions.  Although we will vary the format of these discussions throughout the semester, we will always work to use our discussions to connect the class readings to classroom experiences, as well to other resources in our field.  My hope is that the discussions will serve to help students create the meaning around the readings and to relate the readings to their prior experiences (......as Bransford suggests is important!).  I hope that students will ground their comments in the readings and begin to use the works of our authors to illustrate and expand thinking about technology use in classrooms.

Papert's work creates a nice backdrop for our reflections on technology use.  In 1980, Papert was almost a prophet of later technology use in schools and some of the challenges this use would create.  One of my favorites quotes from Papert comes from the Introduction to Mindstorms:  "In many schools today, the phrase "computer-aided-instruction" means making the computer teach the child.....in my vision, the child programs the computer and in doing so, both acquires a sense of mastery over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology and establishes an intimate contact with some of the deepest ideas from science, from mathematics and from the art of intellectual model building."  Although Papert was talking about Logo here, his idea could also be useful in thinking about Web 2.0 uses of the computer in classrooms where students are building and creating blogs, wikis, videos, podcasts.....

Unfortunately, Seymour Papert was in a serious accident in Vietnam last year and is currently still recovering.  He will always be remember, however, as the visionary who helped guide our early use of computers in classrooms.

For this week, I am hoping that students will begin to use readings to illustrate examples and vice versa.  If we get off to a good start in this area, we will have a model for the rest of the semester.  Evrim and I will be working to guide these initial discussions, without dominating them.  We will see how it goes.

And the picture if of Seymour Papert!