This week, we worked on Sychronous communication in online courses, and I learned about something new. Honestly, in the online courses I have taking through UIS so far, this option has not even been recognized, and I have not had any kind of idea about it's existence. This module prompted me to learn more about my LMS at my own workplace (d2l), and find out if there is even a virtual face-to-face feature, or if it is all just through old-school chatting. If it is old-school chatting, I think I am going to explore how to use Zoom.us in these classes. Zoom offers free accounts and institutional accounts. I found an article about how zoom is used in a university setting, and think it could be valuable for the media literacy course I am planning to implement.
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Module 3 was about Asynchronous Communication, and it's importance in online classes and activities. I have to say as I reflect on class, it really has been keeping me on my toes receiving the emails in response to what I have posted in Moodle. This module also forced me to look more into blogs. It's almost like genealogy: for a while, I stopped reading blogs just because they seemed passe to me, and I had moved on to Twitter, social media. But the more I delve in, I am almost realizing that this is still considered a mainstream communication platform, and more intellectuals have started creating blogs since I quit reading them, meaning I have more areas to choose from. I would really like to get back into reading blogs and listening to podcasts. If only we had an unending amount of time!
One blog that I found useful was this one, about Information Literacy: http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/ . I like they they keep it current with recent articles on how to teach students this valuable skill. For our second week, we were invited to follow different entities on Twitter, and one another. We were also given homework each week on Twitter. My handle is @gwynonite. I created this name back when I was in high school "gwynonite, like dynomite". It's stuck with me.
I have to say that I quit Facebook almost 5 years ago now, because I felt like it was encroaching on my personal time. I don't feel that way about Twitter somehow. I said this in another essay I wrote, that I feel like with Twitter, you can get on the bus and off the bus. I don't feel as glued to it as I did Facebook. I think about Twitter for education purposes, and how my daughter will grow up in a world that always had social media, and what that all will mean. I like that students will be better able to connect. I hope that will be able to built friendships and solidarity. I do understand about the raw underbelly of all of this, and online bullying. But I love the idea that she could just tweet to National Geographic, or other museums in a way that seriously no one had access to when I was growing up. I wonder if any of my followers have used Twitter in their classes, and what this experience was like? It has been so long since I've had an active blog...we're talking the age of LiveJournal. I am excited to start doing something like this again!
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