Thursday, February 10, 2011

HI, I have a new group on Learning Technologies site - interesting people from a broad area of the world, new behaviour online- interesting to deal with and a challenge in understanding and making them work as a group. It appears to take a lot of individual effort into creating an online class culture. I start observing this as a phenomenon. Perhaps I wil lbe able to draw some conclusion later in my life.
I have also discovered this, perhasp you know this already 


http://storybird.com/accounts/login/

12 comments:

  1. Hello Lora! I hope the group become very active and start working as a group. But what do you do if most of the participants are very passive and do not communicate with each other? They just do their tasks and that's it.

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  2. I posted a"Lurking online"issue - then I write personal letters - ask about what they do, maybe they are very busy, but will join in later. I decided my participants' responses are not substantial enough, I decided to send more theory links. I reminded them that without the automated marks they will have my evaluations sent to the BC. This is also a motive,right?

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  3. Hi Lora,

    I must admit I haven't thought much about "creating online class culture" as you have nicely put it, but it seems to be a very interesting and not very easy to deal with issue.

    I guess that the ideas of collaboration and sharing are quite new to a lot of teachers. I'm sure we can all witness that in our f2f schools, courses, or similar. I guess avoiding team work seems a lot easier when you don't have to face other people.

    Please share your conclusions with us, and good luck with the new group.

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  4. I have started two online classes recently and the problem I encountered is the lack of team work and interest in other participants. The students do their tasks and move on. They don't go back to forums to read other students replies or interact in any way with each other. Their interaction is only limited to me. :(

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  5. The biggest issue I had with the forums on our course, was perhaps an issue with Moodle: It took time and an effort to find them all. I'm used to forums looking like this: http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/ - everything being at one place, with thing I haven't read yet clearly marked. Learning technologies forums were tied to specific topics and, Lora you'll remember this - at one point I started figuring out that there had to be forums I neglected, then I discovered them all and then I started posting to "old" topics, which most of you had left behind by that point...

    What I'm actually trying to say is the following: I think ease of access influences motivation. Maybe if the forums were all in one place and then linked to modules, participants would be more active... It's just an idea.

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  6. I agree with you Dora, but Moodle doesn't have that option as far as I know. I might be wrong though. Lora?

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  7. I guessed as much (about Moodle not having that option), that's why I wrote my issue was probably with Moodle itself. Maybe opening forums on an external website or starting a group blog would solve it?

    P.S
    I like the plane background and new colors. I must discover how it came about. :)

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  8. Sorry, I just felt like change the design and did not tell anyone. ;)

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  9. Anna, I think Moodle can do that - put all forums in one place. Besides, this group, a few members, are very active in Blogs - which did not work in our group - the Blogs from the first section "getting started"- you can access these if you click on "participants" and then you get "blogs" next to general info.
    RE class culture - I fell that ther eis very little bonding through social forum, and the sense of group does not ferment. Perhaps, I should start with cooking?

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  10. Thanks Lora! I am just learning how to develop a course on Moodle and I like it very much.

    Cooking is a good idea! How about films?

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  11. Cooking, films (the Oscars), music - those are all good ideas. :) You might also try looking at their profiles and see if they have an interest in common apart from teaching English. :)

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  12. "Books" did not set the ball rolling, but I see the group slightly differently now - they are very keen on taking things to class, but somehow they do not enter a discussion - although I have very good teachers in this group, as I see, they are not very much interested in the environments other than their own. They do not revisit forums. I understand they are busy and there is no such person as Mirjana - she would redirect our eyes to some older threads, sometimes Dora:). The group does not look at each other but each follow their own mission - this is a learning pattern as well, isn't it? I do a lot of emailing to individuals to check if they are on the course (in thoughts, intentions, plans), this works some.

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