Next week

Hi everybody,

Thank you so much for your contribution to the chat. I hope you enjoyed it as much as Lisa and I did. Here is the Blake reading for next week. Disregard the syllabus about posting answers. We are going back to a regular class rhythm and therefore, we can revert to our good old habit of doing the readings at the last minute (or is it just me?!). As you can see, the pace is quite different when the course is all online. Please bring your logs to class!
Have a great week!

Edwige.

Last chat before we all meet face to face next week!

Hi everybody,

I am really enjoying the discussion this week, trying to resist the temptation to answer every post so that you get a chance to do so!
I wanted to remind you to take a look at Apex's online courses (I sent you the login info via e-mail) and to prepare some questions for Lisa. I will let her lead the chat.
Take care!
Edwige.

Teaching online?

****I just posted the questions for week 2! Looking forward to the discussion!****

Hi everybody,

This is the cover of a book on teaching online. The cover is interesting...how do you understand/interpret the choice of illustration? Drop a comment to let me know what you think!
I am not sure how to interpret it myself!
Edwige.

Looking forward to chatting with you next week!

Hi, Lisa Frumkes at Apex Learning in Seattle here. I'm looking forward to chatting with you next week. I hope you have fun looking at the materials on our website!

Week 2 start today!

Hi everybody!

I hope you had a good weekend. Here is a link to the reading for this week:
- Blake: Brave New Digital Classroom: Technology and Foreign Language Learning. Chapter 5:
Distance Learning for Languages. Does it Measure up? (Robert Blake)

The other reading will be available later today but it is optional. I will post the questions later today and I would like to move the deadline to post your answer to Saturday, at noon so that we have a little more time to reply to each other.

E-mail me if you have any questions!
Edwige.

Our discussion

Hi everybody!

I just checked the forum and I can see that you've started posting. Thank you for that! I would like to make sure that we have a chance to experience a set of productive online discussions before we meet face to face to discuss our online experience on week 3. Here are a few cues to make this happen:

• Please take a few minutes to respond to other people's introduction. Try to get to know them and think about what you would do as a teacher to get to know your students better (social presence), to give them a chance to know you and to create a sense of community.

• Make sure to respond to other people's posts on the reading as soon as you can so that they have a chance to respond to you. If we all wait until Wednesday, we will have a collection of isolated answers, and no dialogue. I guess I just learned sth about setting up deadlines for online discussions :-)
  

• Academic online asynchronous discussions (that's a mouthful!) are unique:

1. Unlike in a classroom setting, you have ample time to read an answer, think about it, go back to the reading and craft a response.
2. This type of discussion is definitely less spontaneous than classroom discussions but it can have a lot more depth.
3. Some of my teachers would require that we actually quote the readings in our answers (when relevant of course). I felt it was an excellent preparation to the paper we would end writing at the end of the week.
4. While online discussions can be very productive, they need to be carefully designed. We'll brainstorm ways to make them work in our chat next week.
   

• Here is the initial questionnaire! Please, fill it out as soon as you can.

Thank you!If you have any questions, e-mail me! Have a great weekend!

Questions are posted!

Here is the initial questionnaire! Please, fill it out as soon as you can.
Thank you!

Hi everybody,

I just posted the questions on the readings. I posted 5 questions, you can pick 3 to answer.

• I just found out that the forum does not let you edit your post once you've posted it. I would suggest typing your answer in a Word doc and then pasting it.
• To post your answer, click on the question and then click the reply button. I cannot move the posts around so we need to make sure to reply to the questions or it will get messy!
• When you have a moment, please fill out the initial questionnaire and remember to log your impressions regularly!
• If you have any questions about the course, the readings or anything, please contact me!
  

Thank you!
Edwige.

Readings

Here is the initial questionnaire! Please, fill it out as soon as you can.
Thank you!

Hi everybody,

Here are links to the readings:

E-learning in the 21st century: ch1 (optional: ch2): we will mostly discuss chapter 1. Chapter 2 is optional. FYI: the sections on Responsibility and Control, and on Teaching Principles are interesting.
Online nation: some statistics for you to browse to get an idea about the impact of e-learning in higher education.

Terry Anderson's homepage:
Anderson is a very well respected scholar in the field of distance education. He wrote several publications together with Randy Anderson.
They came up with the following framework to evaluate online distance learning environments:


We'll read a paper explaining this framework later in the semester. Please don't forget to keep a log to record your impressions and let me know if you have any questions!
Edwige.

Welcome to 7800

Dear All,

Welcome to the class! I am very excited about this project and I am glad it all worked out in the end. We'll start the class with a one hour chat session at 11am on Wednesday (tomorrow). Please take a few minutes to read the syllabus and course intro. This project is very much an experiment, I might add or remove readings or switch them around. And of course, feel free to recommend readings if you come across something interesting.

We'll use the gmail chat tool for tomorrow's chat. I have never used so it will give us a chance to see how it works. I am planning on experimenting with a bunch of new and old technology in this class, we might as well start right away! In case you don't yet have a gmail account, go ahead and create one. Your login and password will also allow you to use Googledocs and the discussion forum.

Once you have a gmail account, please send me an e-mail so that i have your address!
And if you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me or to leave a comment on this blog or to call me: 303 492 7225. Thank you!
Edwige.