Facilitating an online discussion

This week we were able to choose a topic that we are going to facilitate a small group.  The topic I chose was that of at risk students.  This topic is very important to me since I teach in a district where most of the students I teach might be labeled as at-risk at one time or another in their career .  Hopefully, I will be able to get some more ideas about how to reach some of these kids in order to be able to help attempt to reduce the rate of the students that I teach from dropping out of school.  Even if it means that I make the impression that they will be able to come to me when they are having difficulty, I want to do what I need in order to be able to help the kids of Milwaukee.

This week we were asked to identify synchronous and asynchronous online learning tools that would be appropriate for my targeted online learners.  


There are many different ways that a course could be created as an asynchronous learning environment.  Wiki's, blogs, web pages and applications such as Facebook all have their places for online learning environments.  The applications that I would probably use if I were to create an asynchronous learning environment would be PBWorks, and Google Sites.  PBWorks is a amazingly customizable learning environment that allows for bilateral communication as well as electronic submission and grading of classwork.  Google Sites is nice in the fact that the instructor can not only create a nice site that explains student work and allows for students to submit their work, but due to many customizations of the Google Sites, the administrator can give or limit many of the permissions that students would have on the site.


For synchronized online learning experiences, I have mainly found applications that would be best suited for small groups.  Skype and other free  web conferencing applications like it that I have used, are best suited for small groups of up to 4.  If you go much beyond this number, the amount of lag makes the conference impossible to continue effectively.  The best large group synchronous online learning environment that I have experienced is Elluminate/Blackboard.  I have been part of an online learning experience of over 20 members with little to no audio or video lag.  The ability to use a whiteboard or share desktops truly enhance the learning experience of the students.  For the instructor, having the ability to limit the ability of students to disrupt the class when student input is not needed is a great feature.  Some of the other larger scale online learning environments that I have read about but have not experienced are Red5, Wowza, and offerings from Adobe in the form of Flash Media Server.   

Some Student Work with Web 2.0 Tools

Here is a VoiceThread my students did about Plate Tectonics.

CeDO 550 Week 1

These are some problems I had navigating the course management system and utilizing the discussion boards.  I have been exhausted this week with attempting to do he work I need to do at my school, help my 2 kids at home, work my second job and attempt to keep the house clean since my wife herniated a vertebrae in her neck.  Due to this, I was confused by our new class site and how the work was going to be assigned.  When I checked out the assignments page and the submissions page, I hadn't realized that we needed to click the link in order to get the description of the work.  I am very glad that the contact number for our professor was listed on our class site. Between the phone call and re-watching the recorded session of our "Class 0", I was able to get my work done.  Hopefully I won't have the same problems next week.