550 Final Reflection

It is hard to believe that we only have three more courses to complete before our program is finished!

I will use what I learned in this course over the next 30 days by making sure that I check in more frequently with my online students. Sometimes I do not check in as often as I could. And, I will also work on providing better feedback to them!

I will use what I learned in the next year by implementing online discussions with my online students. It would be nice to check in with them face to face and learn with them in a virtual classroom.

After completing this course, I would like to learn more about how to use Elluminate. Perhaps I don't need to learn more about it, rather I need to spend more time practicing using it.

550 Week 2

After facilitating a small part of last week's discussion, I was surprised at how difficult it was to run the discussion. There were so many things that I needed to keep my eyes on. It was difficult to ask meaningful questions, keep the discussion moving, and include everyone in the discussion.

Not being able to see individual's reactions also make facilitating difficult. I am a very visual person, who is quite animated in real life, and I thrive on interpersonal interaction. So, not having immediate nonverbal feedback was challenging for me!

550 Week 1

I am shocked at the degree that online instructors are making themselves available to their students. I facilitate a group of online students, but I do not make myself so available to my students. I remind them to breathe, and that few things are so important that they cannot wait until morning.

As an online facilitator, I do not, and will not, make myself available to my students during all of my waking hours. I know that instructors need to be accessible, but I feel that sometimes I am walking a very fine line. I want my students to be successful, but I need to have some separation between work and my personal life. The first year that I taught, I was working 12 hours a day, and going in on the weekends. I was miserable. Having balance in my life makes me a much happier and more content instructor who can meet the needs of her students!

540 Week 5

Good news to report! My Dell laptop came back to life. As much as I wanted to have a Mac, it isn't really in my budget. I need to pay for grad school first!

This week, we were working on Google Trends. But, I have a different question that is completely unrelated. I have my junior/senior sociology kids working on a ning right now. And, I would like to create a wiki/ning/moodle (or something similar) for my 90 freshmen history kids. However, I am trying to figure out the pros and cons of each.

I used a wiki with my 7th graders. It worked for what I wanted it to do. But, I am not sure that it is the correct forum for my 9th graders.

The ning that I created for my 11th and 12th graders works well for them, and they appreciate the break from moodle. However, do so many teachers in my district use moodle because they love it, or because they are familar with it? Is it worth exposing my students to the ning, just so that they can become familar with something else? Can the ning do all that I want it to do for my kids? And, if I couple that with Google Docs, will that meet all of my needs? I will continue pondering. If you have any advice, I would love to hear it!

540 Week 4

This week, we looked at Bill Tancer's company, Hitwise. If I worked in marketing, I would appreciate Tancer's information. However, as a consumer, who does not work in the marketing department, I wonder where Tancer draws his line. He seems to follow our every action online, and it concerns me that the information could fall into the wrong hands. I am not usually so paranoid, but I am concerned about how slippery this slope could become. Doesn't the library already tell the government which books I am checking out?

On a totally unrelated note. I have been having difficulties opening the Wiziq helpful hints for completing the Z score table. Any ideas?

540 Week 3

I really liked creating the survey on SurveyMonkey this week. It was much easier to create than I thought it would be. Well, the actual creation of it was easy. But, it was difficult to decide how to word the questions the best responses. I never thought that writing survey questions would be so difficult. Additionally, it was difficult to determine how to balance close and open-ended questions. Closed ended questions provide quick feedback that is easy to chart and analyze. However, open ended questions might offer the opportunities for better answers. And, will some people shy away from the open ended questions, because they require more work? Or, will others be frustrated with the inability to offer as much constructive feedback as they desire?

540 Week 2

Bad news to report.

While working on my assignments last night, I knocked over my Diet Dr. Pepper, and the entire beverage landed on my laptop keyboard. My computer is less than a year old, but accidental spillage of beverages is not included in the basic warranty. Of course, I did not think that I needed to purchase the extended warranty. I am an adult. I am usually very careful. I thought I would be immune from such catastrophes. But, I am not immune. However, I am thankful that much of my information is backed up online, and I am thankful that many of my pictures are saved online as well. However, I am sad that I didn't ever really use delicious. I fear that I have lost all of my dozens of neatly organized bookmarks!

So, now, what to do? I popped off all the keys right away, and dried what I could with Q-tips. I took out the battery. And, now when I turn it on, it immediately shuts down. So, I called Dell, and the very nice technician thinks that there is a problem with the board......

Any ideas? Should I send it in to Dell? Or, is there a local trustworthy company? If it costs a bunch to fix it, should I just think about buying a Mac? Any and all ideas are welcome.

Thank you in advance!