Week 3 515

Thanks to all who replied to last weeks topic. "What do you think about phasing out textbooks in an online course." Though the sample size was small and perhaps biased toward the online environment it was helpful to read your ideas, with most commenting that is was a good idea. At each of our monthly teacher meeting the subject comes up in some way or another. Many teachers are comfortable with the conversion, citing economics and efficiency as reasons. Others argue on the behalf of our students parents who have communicated a desire for having textbooks for the classes we teach. This could be a response from their own personal educational experiences or their tactile relationship to the written word. The discussion often becomes one of marketing, how do we make the parents comfortable with the decision to move away from textbooks. We did actually make some headway in this matter during the meeting as several promising strategies were discussed.

Producing and displaying reference materials that can be acquired by parents if desired. In addition the text in most cases can be printed and then read. Programs are also available that will read the text which can be helpful to certain students.

I have worked hard over the last several weeks to expand my findings and resources on the web by utilizing more diverse search engines and have been rewarded with a greater depth and variety of supplemental information for my students. This week I added net Trekker to my repertoire and immediately put it to work for me. While putting together a presentation for my biology class I use net Trekker to search for information on simple animals and the evolutionary trends in animals. It was very helpful in providing interesting and valuable links. This will be a tremendous asset for my science classes.

Once again I would like to thank you all for your input and I hope your finding these tools and useful and applicable as I am.

515 Week 2 So what do you think about online texts?

Once Louis started to discuss search engines I thought of an application to what I was learning. I had produced an assignment on web searches for one of my online science classes a couple years ago. I had read about and used some of the skills Louis mentioned but still much of it was new to me. So I have been working on updating the assignment to make it even more useful to my students.
The history of the internet section activity were we found researched and then posted new and interesting knowledge we acquired, provided me with much new knowledge and was very interesting. It will be interested to read the forum as more people post as there is quite a bit diversity in our group considering age and backgrounds. It will be interesting to hear what he younger folks have to say as well as the techno geeks and grey beards like myself.
I finally did get my book this week which will make that particular section much easier to deal with. Though it did bring up and issue that I would like your opinion on . Teaching online my students receive there information in many different ways. They can attend or view a taped version of a lecture where I discuss or demonstrate the information from the chapter. They may also view a lesson that has information and interactive games for them to check their knowledge. I also provide power points and web links to further enhance the amount of information concerning the topic. At the high school level we also send out text books. With the addition of the new 6-8 level we are no longer going to provide text books but will provide digital online access to the texts. Now in our meetings the teaches reacted very negatively to the idea of our middle school students not having textbooks. I do notice the difference when I read a textbook and when I read online, but I wonder if that is because there is something different in the way we process the written word as displayed on paper or computer screen or is it more a function of my background and age. After all this computer stuff is almost like magic to me but for my kids it is just another tool. So what is your opinion on this. Think of how easy it would be to have the students use an online text. You would not have to coordinate the shipping, you would reduce your carbon footprint and costs. Hmmmm.........

So much to do and so little time. I don't know about the rest of you but the work this week has taken up a lot of time. Now this is not a complaint as such, really it is the lead into how useful the tools and technologies we are learning really are. Working to meet the Monday deadline means that I will have to complete some of my school work this weekend. Well I will be out of town this week end. In the past that may have really stressed my time management skills. I would have had many a long evening this week and probably stayed up into the wee hours on Sunday and Monday as well. I had even planned on not watching Psych and Monk with my family tonight which is the only shows all four of all like to watch. It really wasn't until this afternoon that I realized that while I was in Rhinelander, Lac Du Flambeau, and Wausau this weekend for our open house programs instead of using all the down time that I usually spend being bored or trying to find a good place for chicken wings, I could be accessing and completing all my MEIT work.

That's right I can simply pack up my laptop, with my delicious online bookmarks, my in the Box online storage, my Empressr online presentation tool, and my digital scanned textbook and off I go. Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning I can now spend being productive just as if I were sitting at my desk at home. Not only that but I can probably even use the computer to find a place with wings.

I found the online presentation applications to be fairly sophisticated after looking at the graphic applications we previewed this week. I currently use Power Points on an almost daily basis and so the use of these online presentations was easily understood. I was impressed as I mentioned at how sophisticated many of the sites were. Currently I have unlimited use of Elluminate which is an online synchronous white board web application. There must be a term for what it is that I am unaware of, maybe someone can fill me in on that in the comments area. With Elluminate I can upload a Power point and use it for my presentations. I really have not thought of how I can utilize the online presentation capabilities but I look forward to reading the ideas generated in all of your Blogs.