Eric Calvert's List: LRND 6820 Student Blog Excerpts

• When I was participating in the DREAMS program, I took BIOL 550; Teaching Evolution and the Nature of Science; Dr. Ellen, taught on-line. She used a multimedia approach. There were readings, videos, simulations and web-quests. It was very engaging and the types of assessment included pre- and post- session concept maps, reflections, discussion board postings and quizzes. She even listed one of the learning outcomes: Use a constructivist approach to teaching. In this case we used the 5E method. I didn’t know at the time, but now see how this approach involves the student in a much more direct manner, allowing the student to construct meaning from all of the information presented.

• I feel what makes a good online learning experience in part is based upon the learner and their level of effort. Also the layout of the learning environment. Is it user friendly, does it make sense, does it flow, easy to navigate, etc.

• I feel that in online learning situations educators sometimes try to over compensate for lack of face time by overloading wiki’s with content. Or the teacher will have a blackboard site, a blog, a wiki and an online textbook. This was the main pitfall of the classes that I found to be sub par. I found having to bounce around to 4 different websites for 1 class just to make sure that I wasn’t missing an assignment or an announcement to be very frustrating and annoying.
• So to me the most important factor in the success of an online learning experience is the simplicity of the navigation and communication of course content and outcomes. S
• ince learners are often navigating the content on their own it is very important that they know exactly where and when to look to see what they need to be doing to succeed in learning the new content.

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• Also, on an off the wall subject, I enjoy studying military history as a hobby. I do recall stumbling onto a website that focused on the Vietnam battle of Landing Zone X-Ray. I thought this site was really neat and almost revolutionized the way in which one can learn history.
• It first gave a good precise reading of a part of the battle, and then you could click an interactive button that showed the map of the battle and all of the troop movements for that sector of the battle. It even went as far as showing Helicopter drops of troops, exactly where the troops were dropped and if the Helicopter took enemy fire at the time!
• It also had the option of simply watching the interactive video so you could see exactly how the battle unfolded.

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• As I am starting to really dig into my master’s courses, I can’t help but feel digitally disorganized for the first time in my file. From the blogs to the tweets, I am hopelessly searching for a way to organize all of the information that is circulating in my courses and life right now.
• On a positive note – I do love the way that the courses are structured around peer interaction, and I am searching for a method to not only improve my work based on their reviews, but also capture and store their review so I can understand the evolution of my work and all of the twists and turns along the way.

• I have learned quite a bit from Lynda.com, a site geared to teaching software. At one point I had to re-teach myself Final Cut, the video editing software. From the basics of importing video to editing clips, there seemed to be a training video that would clearly walk me through all the steps. The best part was that they often would talk about other ways of doing the same adjustment. Many options were out there and they made it clear that there is more than one way to solve a problem.

• A "good" online learning experience to me is one where the instructor acts as a facilitator, but allows collaboration, communication, and discussion among the students.

• I have had an experience with a course that was lacking many things and did I did not feel as if I benefited as much as I could have. The course structure was extremely rigid and did not allow for any personalization of adaption of course material. This particular college was limited to using only one online platform for each class and I felt that this one environment did not fully suit the needs of each online course. The learning environment was extremely restricting and no other outside ideas could easily be brought it and shared with fellow students.

• Elluminate is a great online learning module that I have used in the past. It can be useful for online, blended and face to face classes. With Elluminate you can participate in a live session, which gives you a virtual face to face experience, and if you can’t make it to the live session you can review the recorded session. You can also use it to review information that you were present for, but did not quite understand. This is great for difficult subject matter.

• As the article states we must prepare for learning environments will become more network based.

• the forming of our PLE/PLN is a priority. Fine-tuning our Diigo and twitter accounts research and voice thread project provide a consuming agenda of thought, activity, and planning.  It will be a challenge with many hours laying the foundation for successfully completing these activities. Specifically, understanding the order to manage all these activities is critical to their success.

• As a web designer and ecommerce developer, I have learned a lot from using tutorials and training modules for open source content management systems like Magento and Joomla. Their communities offer a blend of videos, forums, PDFs, screen shots and even flash tutorials to help you learn and develop your own web site. They have support to contact if you can’t find an answer through any of the other mediums, and the professional relationships that can be built through interacting with other users are very valuable.