CEDO 550 - Week 2 Reflection

My experience with online communities has been positive, for the most part. I have participated in Facebook, Twitter, and of course, Elluminate, Skype, and the other forums we've used for class. I have found them easy to use, and although some of them are asynchronous, I'm usually able to get feedback pretty quickly. I believe the biggest benefit of collaborative groups is the knowledge we gain from each other. Most times I think I know exactly how I would answer a question or solve a problem, but then I collaborate with the people in my group and almost always realize, I've never thought of it that way! I think the biggest challenge of collaborative groups is trying to schedule online time to work together as a group. Especially for a master's program. We aren't in high school anymore, so we have spouses, children, jobs, and other responsibilities that it is sometimes very difficult to schedule around. As far as social development and socialization issues go, I think it's very possible to be social online. However, I do think you miss some of the social cues like facial expressions and body language that you would get in a traditional classroom. For adults it's not such a big deal, but for students I would have to say the younger they are, the more important it is for them to have those social cues to rely on and learn from in the traditional classroom.

CEDO 550 - Week 1 Reflection

This has been a very interesting first week for me. Throughout this entire cohort, I have been taking what I've learned in online classes and applied them to my third grade classroom. Now, I'm having to find myself in a new role, considering how I would do things as the facilitator of an online class. It's really made me think a lot about switching roles. The most difficult part of this has been when an assignment says to think about my "targeted online learners". I can't picture doing this with my students I teach every day, because they are in third grade. They don't have enough computer experience to be able to take an online class. So, I have instead decided to think about my colleagues as my "targeted online learners." Two of the synchronous online learning tools that would be appropriate for my targeted online learners are web conference and chat. I really think the teachers I work with would enjoy taking a class that utilized these two tools. Two of the asynchronous online learning tools that would be appropriate would be e-mail and wikis. We already use both of these at school, so anyone I work with would probably feel very comfortable using these online learning tools as part of a class. I think my initial contact was warm and inviting, but I haven't received any comments on mine from classmates yet, so it will be interesting to see everyone else's comments. I also hope it was clear, concise, and user friendly. I think it was, but I will be interested to see what other people have to say. I think one strategy in formatting your contacts to make them clear and concise is to make sure you stick with one font and one size throughout the letter. It's very distracting when I'm trying to get information from an initial contact and I can't stop looking at all the different colors and sizes of text.