This week I was able to really brainstorm ideas for my online class. Many ideas have crossed my mind but the “Where the Hell do I Start?” questionnaires really helped me narrow what I’d like to use for my online class.

The Pedagogical Design reflects my Student Learning Outcomes which are Speaking, Learning, Writing and Listening/Understanding (the language). Those are important components in learning a language. It incorporates Vocabulary, Grammar, Culture, History-Geography and even some French Philosophy. Writing can be achieved through Writing Compositions (every Chapter/Unit), Pen Pals (either required or for extra-credit) and practice exercises (on an online website linked to the textbook). Reading, again in an online class setting would include reading the textbooks as well as various handouts I would post on Blackboard. The Speaking SLO is the most difficult to achieve, in my opinion, as this is designed for an online course. I was thinking if students could record themselves using tools like Wimba or practice with other students (also using Wimba). As for my fourth SLO, Listening and Understanding, I believe lectures, videos/clips and other students would be some of the best “tools” to help them achieve this objective. Also, if I had “guest speakers” post a video of themselves, it would be a great way for students to listen; and, knowing it’s a video, they could watch it over and over again in order to best understand it.

I would like to experiment with various tools for each component of my course. I have various Design Elements for my course. My Lessons could use Blackboard, Wimba, Powerpoint, YouTube, iMovie, Edustream and Word docs. My students’ Writing Compositions could be submitted via Blackboard and the use of Edublog could eventually come in handy. The Projects I require my students to work on and submit (via Blackboard) would use tools such as Google Search and possibly Camtasia. For practice, students could connect via Skype and Wimba and the recordings for each Quiz would be made possible via Wimba and/or Camtasia. Their Mid-Term which could still be a presentation would most definitely use Powerpoint and hopefully Slideshare. The use of Wimba is also a possibility. Their final exam could be completed via Blackboard and a recording device such as Wimba. I could create office hours via Elluminate and/or Skype.

I am pretty excited about all of these new options I could use. I’m still getting use to embedding links and videos and the whole HTML language as a whole, but I’m hoping this practice will help me get better.

Some other thoughts now… I, (and many of my students for various projects) frequently use the Google Search tool to find information we are looking for. Recently I watched a video that was pretty eye-opening regarding what our Google search (and other websites) “show” us. See video below:

http://youtu.be/B8ofWFx525s

Finally, I thought I’d post something more “personal”–a video of one of my sons (Noah – 1 1/2) imitating animal sounds although he knows quite a few more now. (I speak to my children only in French so they will be bilingual.)

http://youtu.be/z97UM5cBUQg