Hello...
I am looking forward to working with all of you.
This is the first distance education class of my academic career in which I am a student. I have taught distance education classes using interactive video to local high school students and used WebCt to deliver materials and content.
But...I have to be truthful and admit that I have been stumped by the MOO network which we will be using for class. I hope I have it ready to go by the time class begins. I have the IT Director helping me--she's great.
I have already learned several new things by being in this class. The first is IM. I had not IMed before. Yesterday I had a session with Dr. Rice who helped me identify the real problem I was having. The second is blogging. I have been hearing the term for a year and reading about how some history professors are using them in their classes. Sounded interesting. Still, I had not gotten around to actually figuring out what it really was. Now I know.
This is the first distance education class of my academic career in which I am a student. I have taught distance education classes using interactive video to local high school students and used WebCt to deliver materials and content.
But...I have to be truthful and admit that I have been stumped by the MOO network which we will be using for class. I hope I have it ready to go by the time class begins. I have the IT Director helping me--she's great.
I have already learned several new things by being in this class. The first is IM. I had not IMed before. Yesterday I had a session with Dr. Rice who helped me identify the real problem I was having. The second is blogging. I have been hearing the term for a year and reading about how some history professors are using them in their classes. Sounded interesting. Still, I had not gotten around to actually figuring out what it really was. Now I know.
posted by Prof Santoy | 8:02 AM
2 Comments:
Well done using a blog. This is all there is to it. And then there's commenting on blog posts. Tell me more about the interactive video you've used in the past. By interactive do you mean live? Looks like you got into the MOO for the first week. The benefits of the MOO are that we can push pages onto everyone's screen, that we can save the transcript, that it works on low-end computers and low-speed connections, etc. IM is valuable for different reasons, really. First, you can reach people when you need to reach them if they're online a lot. We've created support systems using YahooIM for, literally, thousands of students. Helpful, I think.
The ITV classes are held using live video. The instructor sits in front of a camera and a screen and his voice and image is transmitted to the students who sit in a classroom equipped with a camera (so the instructor can see them) and a screen on which they see the instructor.
We have several sections per semester in which we are transmitting to two or three campuses at the same time.
The difficulties we have had center mostly on communication between the instructor and his students. The instructor cannot see the student's face; the screen is too small, so it is difficult to have a discussion. Most ITV labs are not equipped with computers so the student does not have easy access to the instructor via any other means beside the screen. Many students do not have computers at home which compounds the problem.
Several of the campuses we teach to are local high schools, so the isntructors can go to the school to have more direct interaction with students.
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