Here is the roundup of my POT semester. Right off the bat I’m going to admit that I was not good at responding to other’s posts and replies to my posts. Mia Culpa… I’m going to go back over the next few days and respond and will work diligently to correct this error next semester. It was a real learning experience as I realized that I was not part of the dialogue enough and I regret that… If this were a live class, it would be me talking very fast for the first five minutes of class and then pure silence for the rest. No conversation.  I feel that my posts were reflective and fairly thorough. I really enjoyed doing posts using Camtasia, but should also have investigated some other means to present material in an alternative to straight text. On average, I spend about 3-5 hours on Fridays working on the class – I had a crazy schedule this semester. This whole experience as an online student will greatly influence my creation and implementation of an online class. With that said, here are my comments on my weekly posts:

• Week 1: Started my first blog. It took a bit to learn, but I really like WordPress. I’ll be using blogs as a tool in my online classes. I also reviewed what I wanted to learn from the class and found that the class has more than met my expectations for the semester.
• Week 2: I really liked taking the Beginner’s Questionnaire and the Getting Started Chart was very helpful. This week gave me a tentative framework for an online course. This framework was important to have in mind as we explored the online syllabus, pedagogy, creating a community and other topics in future weeks.
• Week 3: This week I further reflected on the organization of a course and using Blackboard and other possible tools to meet my course objectives/SLOs.  I need to follow up with Bethanie on her comments about Discussion Boards. Discussion boards are one of the few tools that I have used, but not effectively. I also want to examine rubrics used by instructors for grading discussion boards.
• Week 4: This week had me thinking of teacher-student interaction and how it relates to the design of online courses. Effective interaction is one of the keys to having a well-designed class. As highlighted in my post and the responses I received, feedback is very important. It helps students improve their work and also feel part of an online community as discussed in our Week 8 posts. I also realized how useful it is to view other colleagues’ online courses.
• Week 5: This week was all about clarity in your syllabus. Students need to know what you expect from them and what they can expect from you. Lisa also gave me the idea to have a video introduction to the course that also gives a tour of the class website. I’m also going to go back and read the “optional” reading for the week.
• Week 6: Had fun embedding a TED Talk and seeing what everyone else was posting. I really liked the discussion on Tom’s post concerning text to voice software. When I have more time I’m going to learn some more html. I can see how it would be useful to know when something just doesn’t look exactly right in Blackboard.
•  Week 7: Time management and Twitter. This week had me considering the difference between online and face-to-face classes when it comes to deadlines for assignments, quizzes, etc. When I look back at the plan that I began to cook up concerning my world history class back in our discussions of Weeks 3-4, I see that I assigned too much and did not have realistic time frames for completion. As a Twitter fan I enjoyed reading everyone’s pros and cons concerning the micro-blogging site.
• Week 8: Creating Community. As I stated in my post for this week, I think that this weeks readings, etc. linked together many of the learning objectives of the previous weeks. The discussion at my post about having “student mentors” in the online class environment might be worth considering. I’m also going to take care to give feedback to students in order to keep them engaged in the class. Again, I have to read the “optional” reading.
• Week 9: So many ways to engage the students; blogging, peer editing, discussions, reflective writing… I can’t wait to try these tools out. I’m especially interesting in trying out blogging/micro-blogging. Still trying to digest the “Three Generations” article.
• Week 10: Copyrights, public domain, intellectual property, Teach Act – the legal stuff. OER – cool videos, free books, and lesson plans – the fun stuff. Liked the TED Talk as it encouraged a departure from current thinking on the control of intellectual content.
• Week 11: My presentation was a reflection on what we were covering from Weeks 2 and 3. I guess I’m a bit enthusiastic for the “Interactive Syllabus.” I used Camtasia again for this recording. I’ll try a different web-based solution for a future presentation.