Monthly Archives: October 2012

In last week’s post, I wanted to add a fun element to the online class. So, this week, in continuation of this topic, I am thinking Second Life. As Ko and Rossen says, ” Reasons for using the virtual world for educational activities … the desire to inject some fun into education…” I am not too familiar with Second Life, except for the one time time where a friend of mine introduced me to the game some years ago. I think at least 11 years ago. And I was re-introduced to it at a recent workshop we had here at MiraCosta College. However, my skills are in question here.

I think, first and foremost, I must know what the heck I am doing before I introduce it to the class. For research purposes, I think I should try to play the Second Life game and get myself familiarized with it.

At this moment though, I am feeling overwhelmed by the tremendous amount of tools out there for our use in the educational setting. Yes, they can be easy to learn and use; however, the time factor and fear factor get in the way. For now, I just need to breathe. Hopefully, by the end of the POT Program, I will have some sense of comfort and familiarity.

I am going to continue with the discussion from my last post – to build a fun-filled learning environment, for this fosters community.

It all starts with building a rapport between students and teacher and students with other students. Pilar’s video presentation’s suggestion about contacting students before the class begins is a good idea. Also, I like that it is not only the visual aspect of it but the audio as well. Students are able to connect to the person that will be leading the class in a fuller manner than just with black and white texts only. Of course, introducing yourself as the instructor and giving some personal information like family, hobbies, and likes and dislikes give a personal touch. The sight, sound, and emotion factors are evoked. Now, we have trust. From then we can begin a class with leadership, with the instructor setting the tone for the classroom environment.

I used to teach Idiom and Vocabulary for lower level ESL classes; seeing this video brings back happy memories of fun times. Now I teach Advanced Writing courses, including a College Composition course for non-native learners. I am thinking of ways to make these classes come alive even more. Of course, I won’t have time to just play games, but I am trying to incorporate fun elements to the lessons. Besides, I have a 6 year-old niece who loves to play games. At the age of three we did flashcards of about 30 different famous sites around the world, and she memorized them all. She thought we were playing a game. She loves saying Machu Picchu. She laughs every time the card comes up. Now, she’s learning sight words. I think I am going to borrow the swat the word method from the video. I like this video, especially, because I like hearing laughter during times of learning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtwDhKso2No

I found that the workshop and the textbook information complemented each other well. I appreciated the visual examples given in the workshop, and Lisa walking us through the process step-by-step was very helpful.

The textbook’s emphasis of giving students details, details, details was not missed. I know that as an instructor, stylistically, I tend to be brief and to-the-point. But, I can see that too little detail can be confusing to students. So, the point is to put myself in the shoes of the students or my audience, anticipating their queries.

In on-ground classrooms, the syllabus is referred to or pulled out for reference many times throughout the semester. In the online setting, I see that being able to link the syllabus to internal or external sources will serve that purpose well.

It all started last Thursday evening. I was in my office trying to post a comment to one of my fellow POT bloggers, and when I went to submit it, another page opened up and informed me that I needed to sign in to WordPress, and so I did – from my MiraCosta WordPress site, and nothing. What I spent 15 minutes on disappeared into space. And, I tried again; this time already signed in – disappeared again. So, after a full day of teaching with migraine, I decided I have to leave it for the weekend.

At home, I went to the POT homepage, using my mini laptop for the first time. What a nightmare! Because the screen is “teeny tiny”, the page looked so foreign to me; well- you probably guessed it – it felt like I was reading some ancient Chinese manuscript. Have you ever tried reading letters vertically? I can read Mandarin vertically, but I know for sure I do not have the talent to read English in that format. Okay, what’s my point? After having spent an afternoon watching sample online courses, I came to the realization that simplicity is the best policy is going to be what I stick to if I ever do a full online course.

That wonderful online World Literature class from Yavapai Community College was mind-bending. I mean that guy is good. It’s his first time teaching that particular course and the set-up is super-sophisticated. And, I am thinking to myself – Either he doesn’t sleep or he’s really good at his craft? Then he proceeds to say that he’s going to do a video with a green screen for the next time to have scenes or visuals related to the lesson – and, now, my conclusion is: He doesn’t sleep. Did you realize that 15 minutes later the guy was still talking? Okay – in 1983 MTV was born and I grew up on a staple of videos that lasted no longer than six minutes with Hollywood production teams behind it all and a plethora of hot guys and girls to keep my interest; now, I am going to try to keep my students’ interest with a video of me talking, by myself, no Hollywood production?

Besides the obstacle with keeping interest, the frustration of having hardware and software to be able to interface with all the technological stuff can get in the way. Just look at how my weekend started – hardware and software issues besides a lack of technical skills. In my experience, I have had students who were programmers, software writers, hardware designers. And, then, there was my French MBA 50-something student that didn’t even know what a mouse was. I not only taught her English but I was also computer teacher. This takes me to all the great online instructors that included tutorials for their students. They’re not only teaching a subject they’re also teaching the technology-related stuff. Bravo to them! This ranting eventually leads to this:

Keep it simple and shut up already.