This week I enrolled in a massive open online course (MOOC) - http://etmooc.org/ on educational technology and
media. The first task is for participants to create an introductory post. This is my first experience in a MOOC, so I plan to share my experiences
in my blog posts over the next few weeks.
Since this is my reflective space that I use for educational technology,
I thought it would be appropriate to include my MOOC experience in this blog
space and use the tag #etmooc for the
associated posts. One of the learner expectations in the course is to maintain
a personal blog for continuous reflection, creativity and resource
sharing.
I reviewed the welcome and introductory session for the MOOC
facilitated by Alec Couros and he shared
a site called about.me (http://about.me) for
creating a personal biography page. The
site is really easy to use and quickly allows users to add background images,
text information, and options to add links to social networking tools. I was looking for a tool to create a personal
infographic but decided the about.me page would be perfect for using during
presentations as well. So I created a
page and it is now active and at http://about.me/barb.brown Thanks for the inspiration to do this Alec!
I’m currently putting together a presentation for new teachers learning how about blogging and plan to share my newly created about.me page during the session. It will be much easier to provide one short
link to participants instead of providing various contact options or a business
card (do people still do that?).
Here’s some information about my upcoming blogging presentation …
Learning Together in
the Blogosphere
Session Description: Empower learners to create, share, interact
and collaborate online through blogging.
What are the principles of design in creating a rich multimedia educational
blog? What are some pedagogical considerations for blogging and micro-blogging
in K-12 learning environments? In this
session we will discuss how to set up and manage an easy to use class blog or
your own professional learning blog while considering issues of copyright and
intellectual property. Take away some
tips and tricks to support an engaging and collaborative learning journey in
the blogosphere!
I will admit, I’m not an active blogger and definitely not an expert in
blogging. I look forward to viewing the recorded session - Introduction to blogging in education by Sue Waters in the MOOC - http://etmooc.org/ for more ideas. I'm planning to share both my successes
and challenges in keeping up with blogging but will also share how experts in the
field are suggesting blogs can support collaborative knowledge building.
For instance, I previously blogged about Wes Fryer and how he inspired me to use blogging with
graduate students in an online class through his book - Playing with Media:
Simple ideas for powerful sharing (2011), Chapter two. Fryer discusses many
ways blogs can be used with students (pp. 58-62) and argues that we need to create and share multimedia messages effectively:
Level 1: Broadcast sharing or homework blog for
informational purposes
Level 2: Professional reflection blog
Level 3: A collaborative class blog
During the session, I will share how Posterous Spaces (https://posterous.com/) [NOTE: POSTEROUS is NO LONGER ACTIVE] can be
used to easily set up a collaborative class blog with students. What do
teachers need to consider when using blogging or micro blogging in the
classroom? What are copyright and intellectual property
considerations in the blogosphere? How can we promote creating and sharing for
collaborative knowledge building with students?
Another resource – The Socially Networked Classroom:
Teaching in the new media age by William Kist (2010) will also be shared during
the session. On p. 58, Kist (2010) offers
rubrics for blog assignments; on p.73, Bud
Hunt’s guidelines for blogging with students; and on p.85, examples are provided for
teaching about online etiquette and characteristics of good blog comments. There is also a discussion on p. 120 about
the common issues expressed by teachers, such as the issue of not having enough time for social
networking .
Personal Learning Networks: Using the power of connections
to transform education by Will Richardson and Rob Mancabelli (2011) is another
great resource for teachers. The authors argue personal learning networks can
transform schools and “our schools need to harness each student’s natural
propensity for participating in online spaces and funnel that energy into
building powerful networks for learning that are used in every class almost
every day” (Richardson & Mancabelli, 2011, p. 7).The authors
discuss research supporting the use of blogs and positive impact on writing
fluency and motivation on p. 50. The text also offers strategies for empowering
students in networked classrooms as a combination of:
- Connecting students and teachers inside the classroom;
- Publishing student and teacher work locally and globally;
- Connecting students and teachers outside the classroom;
- Connecting with experts around the world; and
- Collaborating with others to create and share knowledge. (p.71)
2 comments:
Hi Barb
Thanks so much for all your educational insite... very excited to be sharing this experience with you... I look forward to following your blogs
in this blog there is lot of information about the education
MOOC Infographic | conference evaluates
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