Teaching an online course at the same time as participating in #tofol has given me an opportunity to immediately apply what I’m learning
I’m helping to deliver Reflect and Connect, an online course already mentioned in a previous post.
One of the GOALS of this course is for participants to use social media for developing their Personal Learning Network.
The OBJECTIVES of today’s class was for participants to observe how twitter is used and to then sign up and have a go themselves. These objective contribute towards the formative assessment of their progress through the course.
I love teaching online, it allows me to think creatively about activities to use in such a new and challenging environment. Today I took the Reflect and Connect participants on a tour of Twitter using the application share function in Blackboard Collaborate.
Many responses from around the globe came in when I tweeted to my Personal Learning Network that I was teaching Twitter.
Rather than talking through powerpoint slides in Blackboard Collaborate, application sharing allowed participants to be actively engaged in the activity. One student began to tweet live, during our tour of Twitter.
Thank you for sharing your experiences, Penny! Teaching and learning seem to complement each other, and teachers who are learners surely motivate learners to become teachers, i.e. to become actively engaged in class.
Diethild I find that blogging is an excellent way to keep a record of professional development and reflect on what I’m doing along the way. I prefer to post and comment on blogs rather than leave my thoughts in Moodle. I can look back and remember what I’ve done. Thanks so much for facilitating a great course, it was wonderful to chat to you and so many other educators from around the world
Penny, you are making an important point. A blog in Moodle doesn’t have the same audience as a blog like this one. I sometimes blog on the web and share the link in Moodle when I am taking a course. This way, educators from everywhere can read and interact with me. On the other hand, I might choose to share my ideas in Moodle if I am less sure about what I am writing about.
That’s a good point too Diethild, Moodle does provide a more secure environment for participants of a course to express themselves. Thank you for dropping in again for a chat.