Today I Learn, Today I Question 2

18/10/2011

Last week was a very busy week because my husband admitted to hospital and has undergone an operation, this is why I absent for the last Saturday’s lesson and now only I have time to write my reflection.

During the lesson, we had discussed about the “Engaging the online faculty : Effective modelling strategies for success, by Conrad and Donaldson”, This article is mainly about the model of engagement. How successful is an online course is depending on the interaction between students and online instructor. It is very important to make sure the students engage to the online course, in this article, the author shared a model of engagement which has been proven to be effective process for moving students through level of engagement. In order to make sure the online course successful, the instructor must be able to create an effective learning community with the incorporation of appropriate activities. An important element in this model is the role of the instructor become more and more transparent throughout the course. The traditional role of instructor has changed greatly as learning has shifted from the traditional classroom to online delivery and virtual interaction.

The usage of Webnode shown by Sailor Te and WikiSpace  by Yee Hui have impressed me a lot, thanks for the sharing. I hope I will be able to develop a website like these in the future for my students Before I start on working on my website, I need to clarify “ is there any significant difference between the teacher who is using website and the teacher who is not using the website in their teaching?”

Today I Learn, Today I Question

                                           

     Today’s lesson was a bit different as usual because madam Ng is using a new device in our class; it is the smart board. This is the first time I saw someone operating the smart board, it is amazing! I think it is best if I can use it to teach in my school as well, haha…

     Madam Ng has introduced a few online and offline game websites to us which we can use as our teaching aids in class to attract students interest to learn. Besides that, she also showed us how to use the You Tube to teach in class, by signing in to the You Tube account, we can write a description for a video and students can learn from the description before they watch the video. We can also make our own video and upload to the You Tube as our teaching aid.

     In the discussion section, we discussed about the chapter 5 “ Technologies of online learning” using the chat room created in the moodle. I was the one who participate  least in the conversation, this is because I spent so much time on reading what my classmates had written, and when I was about to type in my own opinion, others had already inserted what they want to say and I have to read again, so, end up I don’t know what should I say since everyone has contributed a lot …Actually I am a slow thinker, this is why I always keep quiet in the class. However, the chat session is useful to me because I came to know some interactive webs which are very useful in teaching and learning, such like You Tube, Wikispaces, Webnode, Facebook etc. I found myself very lack in using all these available teaching tools in my class, I must learn from my classmates, so that I can apply in my teaching and learning in the future.

        The last session of this lesson was Ng’s presentation. He shared a lot of information about the history and development of internet with us, he has done a good job, to me, this is an eye-opened presentation because I found that there are a lot of  new things I only came to know after the presentation, I must admit I am an outdated person…

       Lastly, I have a question regarding the effectiveness in using the websites for T&L purpose. I always hear the parents complaint about their kids spent too much time on the internet, are they, the teenagers nowadays able to learn what they have to learn online without distraction or they are wasting they time chatting with someone online, looking at all those nonsence things, watching videos etc. How are we, as the educators control the students to make sure they are using the internet with learning purpose and not the entertaiment purpose ???