Like others in the class, I seem to be having some difficulty keeping up with regular blogging. Note to self (and others): This doesn't mean that it isn't worth doing. Thinking about what to say and writing it is almost always useful. Saying that doesn't make it any easier, I'm afraid.
One issue that would seem to be important to the future of online learning centers on having one place to go to for everything that you do online for a course. That is the aim of a course management system, but one problem is that the available tools are increasing faster than they are incorporated into such systems. There is a lot of creative talent out there thinking of new things we can do online and new ways to do it. By the time a company like Blackboard gets around to putting something like a wiki or a blog into its CMS, there are a couple of dozen other things to think about using as well. For example, Moodle has both wikis and blogs right now, well ahead of most of the other systems, but they are poor substitutes for the software that is available in other places.
I would think that one solution to this would be to incorporate what Google calls widgets (at least I think that's Google's term; there are various words used for the same kinds of things) into a course management system. It would be nice to be able to just find individual tools an pull them in as needed. There are some moves in that direction already. KSU now has the Horizon Wimba tools available, but the are expensive and have to be installed by the system administrator. With iGoogle, if I want something like weather or quotations or whatever, all I have to do is search for widgets and try them out until I find one that does what I want. i would like to see an educational/instructional system that does that.
Alternatively, I wonder if one could turn it around. Perhaps it would be possible to have an iGoogle account that is your CMS. Then you pull in the tools you need. If people started creating educationally-oriented widgets for Google, you could build up something there that could rival the "real" CMSs. It would probably be more reliable, too. Google seems to be able to make a system that handles tens of millions of people on a wide variety of browsers in a way that Blackboard cannot.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Pulling Things Together
It's always a struggle to pull things together at the beginning of the semester in this course. But now we have blogs going, tweets tweeting (note the difference from "twits tweeting" and the fact that I didn't say that!), discussions active, and so on. We can now kind of settle down into the routine of checking various communications every couple of days, etc.
I thought I'd reflect a little on Coruse Management Systems and related issues, since the topic has come up in the online discussions. I make a semi-big deal about not calling them "Learning Management Systems" even though that is becoming the term of choice. To me a true LMS would focus on the learning and where they were going. All systems that I know of still focus on what the instructor needs and does first.
I think that a true LMS would have very different entry points for the the learner and the instructor. In each case, it would essentially be a dashboard. For the learner, it would show where they are in the course, make suggestions about what they should be doing next (e.g. "you haven't posted in a discussion for a while, here's one that is just getting started" or "are you ready to add to this wiki yet?" or "this assignment is due in two days, here's what you can read about to prepare.") It should show grades, points, etc, mumber of postings in discussions and all of that. Ideally, it would also be organized by things like learning goals, which could be set by the instructor, the student, or a negotiation. All the "content," activities, and so one would be there to support those goals. And the student would know how well they were progressing toward them.
On the instructor side, the dashboard would show very different things. Sure, you could go in and add thigns, etc. as you can now, but once the course starts, the emphasis would be on tracking student progress, opening up resources at the right time, and so forth. Again, the issue is whether we focus on learning or on the course materials, content, etc. There is a book out about designing online courses that I have not looked at yet because I cannot get beyond my loathing for the title "Conquering the Content." I think it looks at the whole field in exactly the wrong way. But, who knows, it could be a good book once you get beyond that.
More later.
I thought I'd reflect a little on Coruse Management Systems and related issues, since the topic has come up in the online discussions. I make a semi-big deal about not calling them "Learning Management Systems" even though that is becoming the term of choice. To me a true LMS would focus on the learning and where they were going. All systems that I know of still focus on what the instructor needs and does first.
I think that a true LMS would have very different entry points for the the learner and the instructor. In each case, it would essentially be a dashboard. For the learner, it would show where they are in the course, make suggestions about what they should be doing next (e.g. "you haven't posted in a discussion for a while, here's one that is just getting started" or "are you ready to add to this wiki yet?" or "this assignment is due in two days, here's what you can read about to prepare.") It should show grades, points, etc, mumber of postings in discussions and all of that. Ideally, it would also be organized by things like learning goals, which could be set by the instructor, the student, or a negotiation. All the "content," activities, and so one would be there to support those goals. And the student would know how well they were progressing toward them.
On the instructor side, the dashboard would show very different things. Sure, you could go in and add thigns, etc. as you can now, but once the course starts, the emphasis would be on tracking student progress, opening up resources at the right time, and so forth. Again, the issue is whether we focus on learning or on the course materials, content, etc. There is a book out about designing online courses that I have not looked at yet because I cannot get beyond my loathing for the title "Conquering the Content." I think it looks at the whole field in exactly the wrong way. But, who knows, it could be a good book once you get beyond that.
More later.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Next Steps
I have finished reading and commenting on all of the website proposals for this course (at least so far). Overall, pretty good, although there were many that did not really have "instructional design" style goals and objectives, even among people who took ID last semester! As far as I'm concerned, that's one thing that makes a site instructional rather than just informational. It is the desire/plan/intention to have people actually get something specific from the site, as opposed to just putting up information that people can take or leave. Even so, I think there will be some very interesting sites to come out of this semester.
I have also made sure that I have read all the blog posts added by this class since the beginning of the semester. Although setting up netvibes was not quite as easy as advertised, now that I have it, I like it a lot. It's very easy to see what each post is about, and one click takes you there. The one weakness is that I can't see how many comments have been made to a posting without actually going to the blog. I'm sure that I will miss some of those as we go along. Overall, though not a bad way to see what people are thinking about quickly and easily.
Meanwhile, everyone is kind of worried about Twitter. This is really just an experiment to see if it has any value for us. So far, I'm as skeptical as some of the class members, so we'll see how it goes.
I have also made sure that I have read all the blog posts added by this class since the beginning of the semester. Although setting up netvibes was not quite as easy as advertised, now that I have it, I like it a lot. It's very easy to see what each post is about, and one click takes you there. The one weakness is that I can't see how many comments have been made to a posting without actually going to the blog. I'm sure that I will miss some of those as we go along. Overall, though not a bad way to see what people are thinking about quickly and easily.
Meanwhile, everyone is kind of worried about Twitter. This is really just an experiment to see if it has any value for us. So far, I'm as skeptical as some of the class members, so we'll see how it goes.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Starting to Blog the Internet Course
Well, it might be considered unfair to require the students in this course to blog weekly and not do it myself (not counting the other things I blog about separately), so here goes.
I do understand why students feel a bit overwhelmed and confused about the course right at the beginning. We are trying to get a variety of different communications media started here, probably more than one would use for courses with students in other fields. But this is an instructional technology course, and we do want to get some practice with a variety of different things as we go along. The other problem is that these things overlap in the semester, or some of them do, anyway. In this course, the Podcast (to take one example) can be a relatively short, self-contained unit. You read about podcasting, think and discuss about what it might be used for, and then smpend some time creating one (much of which involves learning some audio editing software). It doesn't need to be ongoing, unless you decide to do that once a week on your own.
The thing is, though, that other technologies that we are looking at are not quite like that. Blogging, wikis, Twitter, and others are ongoing and have to be experienced that way. Once we get everything set up, however, it should fall into place better and come together for most of us. And yes, I include myself in that. I'm spending a lot of time now trying to make sure that I have everything covered, that I am following all blogs, and so on.
All in all, I'm hoping that the class will trust me for a little while to see whether it gets a bit better soon.
I do understand why students feel a bit overwhelmed and confused about the course right at the beginning. We are trying to get a variety of different communications media started here, probably more than one would use for courses with students in other fields. But this is an instructional technology course, and we do want to get some practice with a variety of different things as we go along. The other problem is that these things overlap in the semester, or some of them do, anyway. In this course, the Podcast (to take one example) can be a relatively short, self-contained unit. You read about podcasting, think and discuss about what it might be used for, and then smpend some time creating one (much of which involves learning some audio editing software). It doesn't need to be ongoing, unless you decide to do that once a week on your own.
The thing is, though, that other technologies that we are looking at are not quite like that. Blogging, wikis, Twitter, and others are ongoing and have to be experienced that way. Once we get everything set up, however, it should fall into place better and come together for most of us. And yes, I include myself in that. I'm spending a lot of time now trying to make sure that I have everything covered, that I am following all blogs, and so on.
All in all, I'm hoping that the class will trust me for a little while to see whether it gets a bit better soon.
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