Week of May 8 - 14, 2010

Week of May 8 - 14, 2010

Welcome to this week's EdTechTalk (ETT) newsletter! We have had some outstanding conversations on EdTechTalk webcasts over the past few weeks about online education/distance learning both from an instructor/designer perspective and a student perspective (Instructional Design Live, 21st Century Learning and Women of Web 3). It was very exciting to have the opportunity to interview Susan Manning and Kevin Johnson about their book Online Education for Dummies and you have an opportunity to either listen to the audio recording or view the Elluminate recording.

There's also a very exciting online learning opportunity available now that is being co-moderated by 3 of our regular EdTechTalk leaders: Lorna Costantini, Peggy George and Kim Caise. It is an online, asynchronous Moodle Meet on Connected Leadership. The course is active this week (May 16-21) but will be available online indefinitey. It is a week of conversations, examples, strategies and ideas for leaders as we explore together what it means to be a "connected educational leader." There are tons of excellent resources organized in 3 modules: Connected Leadership and PLNs, Parent Engagement in a Digital World, and Change Agents in a Digital World. The course is free and there are some outstanding educators participating in the forum discussions. Please join the conversation to explore possibilities, raise questions, and share your own ideas and resources. To sign up: http://cuebc.ca/moodle/course/view.php?id=15

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The Week in Review

Women of Web 3  #124 Online Education for Dummies with Susan Manning and Kevin Johnson
This was a wonderful conversation with the co-authors of "Online Education for Dummies," Susan Manning and Kevin Johnson. Due to some technical difficulties with the stream on EdTechTalk, we hosted this session on Elluminate which gave us an opportunity to see some of their online resources and book excerpts as they shared some of their best tips and advice about online education. We were also able to involve participants in a brinstorming session on the whiteboard about criteria for a successful online experience. You can listen to the audio recording on EdTechTalk or view the full Elluminate recording here . Their website has excerpts from their book including a wonderful "cheat sheet" to help students decide if online education is for them.: http://online4dummies.weebly.com/ The cheat sheet provides tips for evaluating online programs and habits of successful online students among other suggestions.

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Instructional-Design-Live#18 2010-05-14 Avoiding Overload in Online Courses
The capacity of working memory is limited, Miller (1956) would say to 7 items +/- 2 and the ability to process between 2-4 tasks simultaneously. Long-term memory is essentially unlimited. If we follow cognitive load theory, the task is to devise learning so that it falls into an area where it can be processed into the long term memory in the form of schemata. The discussion this week focuses on the findings of cognitive load theory in terms of designing effective materials and online courses for students. Questions abound, so we may revisit this at a later date.

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Seedlings Show 88-2010-05-13 with Jim Burke
Join Alice and Cheryl as we chat with Jim Burke on our 88th show! Jim is the Godfather of PD in Maine. He has gone from a classroom teacher, to retired, to technology integration specialist, to eMint trainer, to blogger! Jim is a life long learner. A shout out to Teachers Teaching Teachers for their 200th show!~ You Rock!!!

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ETT21 #130: Matt Montagne and Jason Ramsden on Online Education   April 27, 2010
Matt Montagne and Jason Ramsden on Online Education

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EdTechWeekly #163
John, Dave, and Jen to review the latest news and resources influencing education and technology.

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Teachers Teaching Teachers #196 - Mash-up of Youth Voices Student Photographers and Evoke Gardeners - 04.14.10
We hope you enjoy this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers where we bring together gardeners from the alternate reality game, Evoke with photography students on Youth Voices. Take a look at this recent photo discussion, and join a few of our students: Jake, from Chris Sloan's classes at Judge Memorial H.S. in Salt Lake City; Matt, Brianna, and Annie, from Susan Ettenheim's digital photography class at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, NYC; and we are also joined by Evoke gardener, Michele Barron.

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Instructional-Design-Live#17 2010-05-07 John Graves: Engaging Online Learners in the Early Stages of Online Courses

John Graves, the lead faculty in the Master of Science in Science Education program at Montana State University, Bozeman, spends 30 minutes sharing over a decade of expertise in the design and delivery of online courses. John touches on a number of key considerations in terms of engaging learners in the early stages of an online course:

• providing personal information

• making audio introductions available

• being available to respond to students all the time

• personalizing feedback and developing rapport

To give you a sense of how his courses have been received, here is a quote from one of his students:
" John Graves is one of the best online professors I've ever had. He provides valuable feedback for assignments within a few days of the due date. His class is very organized and it is clear what your responsibilties are. He is always available for questions and spends a good deal of time making sure that we know what is going on."

 

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