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Goodbye Dear Course Participants!

Although it's difficult to believe, we've completed Week 10 and the course is closed!  Amazing.  It's been a quick 10 weeks with lots and lots of hard work, confusion, exclamations of a-ha!, struggles, frustration, discovery, and delight.

I am completely impressed with how beautifully everyone did during this course.  The amount of work, and the quality of the work was truly impressive.

I wish everyone a fruitful upcoming academic year.  I hope that all of your dreams come true!

Donna

We're Beginning Week 10!!!!!

I cannot believe that we are beginning the final week of the course.  It is completely amazing and astonishing to see that the course is almost over.  Once again, I am so sad to lose such a great group of friends and peers.  I've learned so much from everyone, and I feel like I've a group of colleagues all over the world.

This coming week is a week of reflection.  Course participants are asked to reflect on what they've learned over the last 10 weeks on their blogs. They are to read about the LoTI self-reflection levels of technology integration of their classes--both now and where they'd like to be in 5 years.

I think that the LoTi scale is interesting.  When I read it the first time, I was teaching three different types of classes.  One class is adult learners at a local community college.  There is no technology in the classroom, and these learners have no access to technology either in the school or in the classroom.  They really need to achieve computer literacy and are denied access by a horrible classroom.  I am going to teach this class again this fall and I'm seriously thinking of buying my own projector to accompany my laptop so I have a one-computer classroom.  While I won't have a computer lab to use, a one-computer classroom is better than nothing.

My second class is at a university and there is a projector in the classroom that I can hook my laptop up to.  We use Blackboard in this class (in fact, using Blackboard is a program requirement) and I use BB daily to post grades, readings, writing examples, my syllabus, homework, etc. I love it.

The third class I teach is this Webskills course.  It is 100% technology and I love it, too.  To me, using technology enhances my teaching and my learners' experience.

Well, it's been a wonderful course with an incredible group of people.  I will miss everyone.  You are very dear to me!

Donna

Oh My Goodness . . . Week 8 is over!!

Week 8 is over and I cannot believe it.  We are off and running on Week 9 and are almost finished with this course.  It's just amazing.  Everyone turns in the final drafts of their reports on Friday, and then we have a short week after that with just a few, finalizing tasks to do.  The course ends on Friday, August 26th.

It has been such a joy to facilitate this course.  The participants are wonderful and have created such a supportive learning community.  It is so gratifying to watch it happen.  I wish everyone could facilitate a course such as this one.

The one thing I really like is that I learn right along with all the participants.  I review and revisit all the technology and tools, and I learn new and different ways to use them.  Teaching and learning is the only way to go.  This course is the best!


Donna

Week 7 Is Over and We're On The Runway to Completion

Well . . . Week 7 has drawn to a close and Week 8 has begun.   Last week the focus was on the one-computer classroom and learner autonomy.  I've used a one-computer classroom for years and year, with access to a computer lab when needed.  I find that it works just fine.  I have rediscovered this fact this last year in another school teach in.  This school has me in a classroom with absolutely no technology at all.  I have one white board and that's it.  I teach advanced language learners and have no access to a computer or projector.  It's awful.  I'm thinking of buying my own projector so that I can at least project PowerPoint, games, and other things for my students.  It's really hard to teach with no technology at all--especially when I'm used to it at my other job.

I cannot believe that this course is almost over!  It's just amazing to me.  Equally amazing is the huge amount of work that everyone has done.  Ive learned so much from the course participants--it's just lovely sharing and learning together.  I feel that we are peers and I am a facilitator, not an instructor.

Teacher training is the best!

Donna

Week 6 Has Finished!!

My goodness . . . . We are now finished with Week 6!  Where has the time gone?  I imagine that all the course participants would answers, "The time has passed with an enormous amount of work and effort, Donna!"

What a huge amount of work everyone has accomplished.  We just did a week with interactive PowerPoint.  Everyone's PowerPoint was amazing--creative and wonderful--and interactive.  I used to HATE PowerPoint because it was so non-interactive.  Students or an audience would just sit and be  blasted with slide after slide.  All they did was suck in words and pictures . . .  no activity.  Watching pictures or listening to a hyper-linked video is not interactive.  These types of PowerPoint are boring, boring, boring.  There is little difference from listening to a speaker without PowerPoint.  I have attended some of the worst PowerPoint presentations in the whole world were the words were tiny, the slides were crammed with as many words as the presenter could get on a slide, and the presenter read off the slides.  What a yawn.  How can this be teaching?

Interactive PowerPoint is another world altogether.  It can be simple, such as asking a question and inserting a blank slide so that the audience must concentrate on answering the question.  It can be as complex as a Jeopardy quiz.  Good, interactive PowerPoint can help produce a lively, active classroom with happy, participative students who are learning, learning, learning--rather than sleeping, sleeping, sleeping.

Donna