Using Technology in F2F is possible too

Here are my reflections for this week. After spending MUCHO time with my slidecast, I was happy with Eyejot because it was easy to make… but then… I HAD NOT IDEA HOW TO EMBED IT… the code did not work at all. So I made the link with the picture above.  I hope we see more of that! Here is the link and then, the slidecast I made (that I did not like and not think I will use it at all in my classes) Enjoy!

And here is the Slidecast I will never use 🙂

http://www.slideshare.net/lauracarlsson/gustar-16539069

I loved the reading this week; not only because it was short, but because it showed me two new places that I did not know: “picfindr.com”and “seamonkeyproject.com”, and because it insist in the use of “low-threshold, low-barrier”technology in the online classes. Moreover, Rosen & Ko ask the question I wanted to ask all this time to our instructors: “Does Blackboard (the CMS I use) supply with superb multimedia and beautiful crafted modules?” How much more do we need to add if we use Voice board, grades, announcements, assignments, plus the material that our e-book provides? We can use media in Bb too, can’t we?  It is just a question, it is not an affirmation. I am planning to add in my online class a Facebook group for participation and to enhance interaction in the class. I want to create a friendly environment similar to the one I currently have in my F2F classes and I think Fb is easy to use and familiar to most people. I do not really want to add much more. Skype or Google Hangout for office ours…?

I do use Flickr in my classes all the time. I create a group page so my students could post pictures of an assigned country and tag the pictures with descriptions in Spanish. Here is the group I created last semester.

I could not embed the picture with the notes, but if you click on the picture you will be able to see the notes in Spanish I wrote for this posting.

See you next week,

Laura

. Week 1 – Bienvenidos! Welcome to my Blog!
This introduction was fun to do since I got to show off my beatiful family. I talked about my personal circumstances and found out that I had very nice and caring classmates/ colleagues in this class.

. Week 2 – Getting Started
I remember I was a little frustrated here. The reading and the time I had put in this week was overwhelming. I posted a picture with flash animation and did not work, so Lisa helped me to clean my mess. Nevertheless, I think this was the most exiting week for me. After I read (too much) I realized all the posibilities that you have when you teach online. I remember I felt like a child with a new toy… could not wait to start!

. Week 3 – Designing a good class… not easy!
The exitement continued this week and all throughout the semester. I think the first three weeks were the most educational for me. I watch a lot of model courses of online instructors. I also opened a discussion this week in Fb about synchronous communication and got immediate feedback from many of classmates and mentors.

. Week 4 – Pedagogy and Course Desing II
This week I played with different design ideas for my future online class. I put together a list of elements I wanted to incorporate in my online classes. My teaching in general benefitted from the readings this week. I really enjoyed it!

. Week 5 – Creating an Effective Online Syllabus
This was a very productive week. It made me work and think in different ways to improve my current syllabi.

. Week 6 – Internet Skills
I have tried many times and even took classes on html. This week made me feel like I do not know anything about it 🙁
Eventhough I had a Google Reader account, I never looked at it. After that week I made the changes it needed to be more accesible to me and now I am “kind of” addicted to look for new stuff!

. Week 7 – Creating a nice learning environment
In this post I created a two column table with activities I do in my face to face class and checking those that could be used in an online environment. Colleagues who teach online responded to this post with very good comments that will help me decide in the future what to use.

. Week 8 – Playing and Experimenting with Tools
I had a lot of fun this week. I remember I dedicated almost all day Friday to it. I tried to find someone available in Google + and while I was waiting I starting to play with all the cool “toys” it has.

. Week 9 – Exploring Diigo and Second Life
Diigo is an online bookmarking that I use all the time since many years ago. I bookmarked Potcert group and now I receive the updates weekly. I experimented and played on Second Life but I did not like it at all. I do not think I will ever use it in my classes.

. Week 10 – Blog; Sites and Foreign Language
This week was very efective to me. I applied right away things I learned from here; for example, I made a welcome website I will definetely use next semester!
I loved to learn about Engrade; however I do not think it will be something I will use. I am too comfortable with blackboard!

. Week 11 – Copyright, Fair Use and Accessibility
This was the “curiosity” week. I researched and look in many many website and learned plenty about copyright and online teaching.

And here I am, on my week 12 (a little late) happy to be here and to have made it. Sometimes during this semester I thought I was not going to be able to continue. Thanks to Lisa, Pilar and all the encouraging comments from our Fb and blogs I made the effort every week. I am doing too many things at the same time but I definitely want this. The chair of my department told me that they are in need of teachers with the certificate, and that I do have a good chance to have a class as soon as I finish. I was very happy to hear that and to meet with Pilar Hernandez who showed me her entire online class and motivated me to keep working hard on this.

Have a great, great holiday vacation everyone!! See you next year

Laura

Copyright and Fair Use
I always enjoy TED’s videos. They are so contemporary and interesting. In this case, I was watching it with a little apprehensiveness. I was always totally against of taking music without paying rights to the author who made it. However, after watching this video my conception changed. I ought to agree that children use Internet in a complete different way today: they are making TV, they are MIXING sounds and making them their own. We need to recognize that we cannot stop what it has been started… a DEMOCRATIZATION of culture and rights. I love these notions of “spreading amateur culture”; “for the love and not for the money”; “digital technology is the revival of the vocal cords”; “common sense has not yet revolted”; “digital technology for this generation is how our kids speak”.”. Policy makers have to be well aware of changes and adapt laws to what is happening right now. Very head opening video!
While I was Reading Ko & Rossen I got curious about how Blackboard manages copyright laws. The chapter did not scare me at all. I do not think sophisticated software is going to go looking for what I put in my classes. I suggest students to watch some videos; I rarely post pictures that are not free or were not made or modified by me (that is why I love Photoshop!). Nevertheless, I wanted to know what Blackboard does about this and I found this link from the library of Wichita University about Copyright and Blackboard. It is a chart of items that are OK to post:
http://library.wichita.edu/govdoc/copyrightbladkboard.pdf
Also Miracosta’s library website has very important information and a video of Fair Use Best Practices that really helps understand everything and refers to mixing videos like TED’s video does.
http://library.miracosta.edu/copyright

Accessibility
Accessibility was a very important matter when I was working on my first online teaching certificate in 2005. We had to buy two books about it and analyze several websites. It seems like today more sophisticated software has better capacity to accommodate the proper needs of students with disabilities than 7 years ago.
I have to find out if Miracosta has a specific statement to place on our syllabi for online classes and students with disabilities like it has in the F2F classes.
Blackboard has been awarded for making its platform accessible and here is it’s commitment:
http://www.blackboard.com/Platforms/Learn/Resources/Accessibility.aspx

1. What might be the advantages and disadvantages of using a class blog or student blogs for your class?
Reading Ko and Rossen and listening to Lisa’s slidecast made me very jealous. I want to teach history or literature, art or writing! Blog is definitely a very effective format for sharing and showcasing students’ writings; looks like one can do incredible things with this tool and make the class interactive, fun and student centered.
Since I do not teach any of the mentioned subjects, and the case studies presented in the book do not apply to what I teach, I will write about what I can use in my foreign language classes. I have some experience with my students in my F2F classes using blogs and discussion board in blackboard. I usually teach the first or the second level of Spanish. Students are not required to write more than 200 words 5 or 6 times per semester. One of these compositions is posted on the discussion board in Bb. By the way, following Pilar’s idea, I sent every student a voice email with my comments and feedback about the compositions… they loved it! The next writing assignment is for the students to read 3 classmates’ compositions and write comments. Sometimes I do not understand a word they say to each other… but they do! And that IS communication 🙂
I cannot ask students to analyze material or do peer review at the level I teach; however, I can use the idea of a “guest speaker” using YouTube videos or iTunes podcasts of distinguished Spanish speakers for listening and comprehension activities.
Using the web
I agree with Ko and Rosen in that students might spend a lot more time of what they have just clicking and looking for material on the web; it could be frustrating and distracting. I would definitely consider giving them the specific place where they should go. I did experiment with this on the lab where students have to go to a big clothing store in Spain and buy products with certain amount of money. I also use Spanish online magazines and news sources in my classes and can definitely find the way to use them in an online class.
I loved the rubric… but needs a lot of work adapting it to my subject.
2. Engrade looks very friendly to use and could be a very good tool. In my case, with all the resources provided by Miracosta and Blackboard, I do not see the need in my classes.
3. Could a Google Site or web page make a good welcome for students?
Yes, I think it is a great idea to have it public so students can see it before the class starts. I did put all the important documents this semester on Google Drive and give the students the QR code and the short url the first day of classes. Those with smart phone left the class with all the important documents with them. Students loved it and I saved a lot of paper to the university!!

Here is the Google Site I made:

https://sites.google.com/site/spanish102fall2012/

I joined Diigo in 2010 and I have now 384 bookmarks. I used to share the links of websites and videos I visited during my classes when I taught at a private elementary school. Parents were scared of what I was going to show their children when the school bought a projector for every classroom (you know, Latina, from South America… dangerous). The principal wanted us to show only videos from her list. No one of them was in Spanish or had anything to do with what I wanted to teach (culture or language). Then, I made public lists in Diigo for every grade and sent the link to the parents. I told them that everything we see in class will be saved in the classroom list. Many kids really appreciated because they could go home and re-watch videos they liked and share them with their parents. The principal also could that way see whatever I showed in class (although she never did) and everybody was happy! I love Diigo, Diigolet and all about it! The exercise we did this week of highlighting an article and make sticky notes is an excellent way to make students read, comprehend and share. I can definitely use this with a Spanish article or newspaper.

I couldn’t find any pitfalls for Diigo; however I did find Second Life challenging for the students and also very easy to get distracted and deviate focus from the learning objective. I do not think I would use Second Life in my online class; but I did enjoy playing with it and seeing myself beautiful and traveling to gorgeous places!

So here I am playing with the tools POTCERT introduced this week. First I tried to hangout in Google + with a group of colleagues from this class. I found Pilar, Lisa, Todd, Daniele, Helen, Jean and Jo but nobody was there to hangout with me 🙁

While I was waiting, I started playing with all the gadgets I could find. As you see in this picture, I did not waist my time waiting! What I loved here was the apps you can share while you are hanging out. You can share documents with Google Drive; you can play a video or make a list of favorites together in YouTube and even keep talking over the video that is playing. Another great thing is that you can record the entire session. This is AMAZING and super easy to use!

With no luck in Google Plus I decided to explore Voicethread. I have used this tool before with no success. My students did not like it. The truth is that we cannot expect too much when we are not an online class. Some students like to do extra online, some hate to do it. This was years ago. I think Voicethread is now more accessible and easy (maybe it is just me getting more comfy with technology). I took a screen picture of me recording a comment. Please, do not think I have nothing to do…

Since I do not teach online yet, I am going to talk (or write) about what I do to create a nice learning environment for my classes. I made a list of tasks I like to do in my face-to-face classes and I created a column with what I think one would be able to do in the online environment  Some of the items have a question mark with the hope of getting some answers from my POTCERT classmates 🙂

I have to admit that although I do not teach online yet, I am a tech “addict” and I have learned all this goodies just for my face-to-face classes and for my own delight. I am constantly looking for fun stuff to learn.

First I took the test and I got one incorrect answer (the open source one). Then, I read and saved Dave’s page. Html is not something  you learn from reading one time! I took many classes on html and I still need help because, like piano, if you do not practice it frequently you forget it all 🙁  When I need html I use Kompozer;  Notepad, or if I am at a Miracosta campus I use Dreamweaver, and time to time you find out that knowing a little of html saves you a lot of time.

I use Google Reader and I added Pedagogy First ‘s Blog feed now. I am a fanatic of Google. I use: Google Drive, voice, reader, sites, blogger, chat, plus, picasa… and anything else you propose!

And for the video, I learned a new way to embed it. It is simple and easy. I chose this video that talks about teachers using WordPress Blog for their classes. I like WordPress and since Miracosta Provides it, I think I will consider start blogging soon for my F2F classes, at least.

Here it is, enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INpaScF5mvo

Laura

Creating an Effective Online Syllabus

A good syllabus was always for me an essential part of planning my classes. My department gives us a well-designed syllabus that we must follow. There is little room for changes; however, I add my own projects and grading criteria and calendar. Looking at Ko & Rossen’s checklist looks like the department got it all! For an online class all it needs is to have more links and technical support and explanations. I really like Pilar’s idea of posting Wimba Voice Authoring giving them a little explanation of every project. That is something that I will definitely have.

With my 25 years of experience I can say that writing the syllabus is not the most important part of the course. The most important part is for them to read it and understand it! Every semester I get over and over emails asking questions which answers are very clear in the syllabus. This semester, I decided to try something different, it looks like it worked! (I did not receive any questions yet). I published my syllabus and calendar in two public Google Docs (or Drive now). I posted the PDFs in Blackboard but I did not print 70 copies of the 5 pages documents. Instead, I printed a few documents with the link (shorted by tiny.cc) and the QR code. I passed the pages around and I made students with smart phone to save the website in their phones. That way, that did not have the excuse that they could not get to Bb. The rest of the students had to write the tiny url on their agendas or notebooks. Less than half of the class had smart phones or new how to scan a QR code. Nevertheless, they appreciated and liked this format. I also made a required test on blackboard with 10 questions about the syllabus.

I feel like every week I am more and more enthusiastic about the idea of teaching online!