I have a hard time navigating the internet.  I get lost  easily.

But I have directions: find content that relates to the course learning outcomes.

Museums are a good source of design inspiration and clothing details for pattern making.

There is a Museum of Online Museums so that seemed a good place to start.   I was expecting an online version of traditional museums but I found something that is quite amazing!

Cliff Muskiet’s Stewardess/Flight Attendant Uniform Collection

http://www.uniformfreak.com/uniforms.html

This is a wonderful resource as the clothing is dated, and there are detailed pictures of the garments.  An assigned pattern  project based on the database would be interesting.  The pattern making project could incorporate ‘period’ details or reproducing the pattern for a specific garment.

I wandered a bit around the museums, and though more appropriate for my other course, I also found

The Vintage Wallpaper Gallery

http://www.5qm.de/#/

Like most museums, you need TIME to visit.

Tags: learning outcomes, online resources, virtual museum

Teaching a course which focuses on promoting health and wellness I found the search tools very helpful, especially the NPR link. This was a great resource for audio and text materials. One of the topics my course focuses on is the idea of energy balance for weight management. I was able to find a lot of recent NPR stories from a variety of different programs which related to this topic. One thing that was really appealing to this was that the stories covered a variety of populations (young, old, different cultures and ethnicity). One challenge I have had in the past with online course instruction is that there is more diversity in the background of the students enrolled in my course. Although health and wellness impacts us all, often it can be a challenge to provide relevant information all the time to everyone. Using NPR is way that I may be able to increase the relatability of the course content to a broader population. It’s at least worth a try!

Tags: "real world" content, NPR as a resource, relating to students

I confess that Shannon Riggs came across these tutorials first, but I am finally getting a chance to look at them. Yeah!

These are nicely narrated videos about writing computer programs in the Python language. These will be excellent additions to my GEO 599 – GIS Programming with Python course.

These videos are at the Khan Academy website, listed under Computer Science.

http://www.khanacademy.org/science/computer-science

If you are curious about how to write a program: see http://khanacademy.org/video?v=husPzLE6sZc

Thanks Shannon!! I am so excited!!

Tags: python tutorials

In doing the webquest for this week, a fact became clear to me that I hadn’t considered before, and I must say I was very pleased to learn it. I am working on a literature course at the 300 level, which would normally have an audience of people majoring or minoring in German. What I found in my searches, however, is that on the native speaker side of the equation, the audience may be considerably younger, as in equivalent of our middle or lower high school ages.
The upshot of this is that there are websites with wonderful activities for many of the texts that I am using, including games (see my forum post for the week), webquests and instructions for interactive group work. Below is a link to the site for the book I am using for the workshop. It is in German, but the layout is still clear, I believe:

Tags: materials, school, wheel

Three of the differences that I perceive between e-campus and brick-and-mortar campus teaching are the testing environments, the more limited ability to offer additional clarifying information informally in e-campus, and the greater need for up-front course development.  I wish that the support for developing distance programs was offered to on-campus instructors, as the rich bag of tricks offered by e-campus offers a lot of value to traditional teaching environments as well.  Traditional testing is better suited to a brick-and-mortar situation, where the instructor can act as proctor, or answer questions in real time.  E-campus has a variety of tools to help prevent academic dishonesty, but these may require more time to arrange and to determine which is most appropriate for the particular situation.  I have found that I frequently use the first few minutes of a brick-and-mortar class to explain assignments, clarify expectations, or evaluate student comprehension of previous material.  This spontaneity is much more difficult to achieve online, and more work is necessary up-front to ensure that assignments are as clear as possible.  Exercises to evaluate student mastery of material need to be built in so they occur frequently enough that changes in course pace can occur before any train wrecks.  Finally, having often been just two lectures ahead of my students and presented lab exercises that I proofed that morning, having all of the materials all ready to go weeks in advance will be very different.  I’ll be glad to be out of the pressure cooker, but I’m wondering how I will find the loss of flexibility to bend the syllabus a bit to respond to either recent events, a sudden spark of interest in a topic from my students, or other such teachable moments.

Jen

(developing online graduate-level vertebrate population ecology)

Tags: assessment, course design, formative exercises

For me, one of the biggest differences in taking part in Foreign Language Learning (FLL) online vs. F2F is really the move that the instructor must make from “sage on the stage” in F2F to “guide on the side” (a quote from one of my grad school profs). In my view, my job is to provide students with the tools necessary to build knowledge and solve issues on their own, rather than simply conveying information to them. This is a helpful exercise for any FLL instructor, as it becomes more an more the model that students need to be able to develop skills on their own in any classroom setting.
Thus, to me, F2F and online classrooms should not be that different. Ideally, for a foreign language instructor, experience in both settings should inform teaching and materials development in such a way that brings the best of both worlds to all students. Here are some priorities that I have tried to follow:
1) Online and on-campus FLL courses should function in parallel.
2) Online students should be provided with enough contact to supplement time spent in class for live use of the target language.
3) All students should be able to use technology to reach out to the target community in a way that is useful and enjoyable for the student.
What this ends up meaning is that my courses should be similar in everything but physical setting, and that students should be able to move seamlessly from on-campus to Ecampus and back. For the instructor, it means innovating in the realm of online tools as well as in developing contacts within the target community that the students can access. On a more complicated note, it is also important for the instructor to be aware of laws and regulations regarding student privacy (e.g. FERPA), so that the students’ online experiences are both engaging and safe.

Tags: Foreign Language, Guide, Parallel

What are we doing? Why are we here?

Learning objectives for blog assignments in our workshop:

• To use social media to reflect on learning and to connect with a real audience
  • Posting your blog entries is one part of what you’ll do here, but commenting on others’ posts is just as important. Who knows? You may also see comments from visiting readers, such as colleagues here at OSU, colleagues from other campuses, authors we’re discussing, or tween pop star Justin Bieber. (Well, it could happen … this is a public blog!)
  • To gain experience with a common social media tool and try something that you might use in your class
• To share artifacts created for your courses
  • Collaboration = Inspiration!
• To learn from each other’s reflections and creations
  • Two heads are better than one!

How often do you need to blog?

• Participants will need to post two original blog entries during this six-week professional development. However, you are welcome and encouraged to post and comment on each other’s posts more often.

What are these categories and tags all about?

• Categories have been created for you and are based on the learning outcomes for our training. (Each category name is an abbreviation of a learning outcome.) Each post you write should relate to at least one of our class categories. Placing posts within categories is an organizational strategy, but it’s also a form of metacognitive reflection.
• Tags are up to you. Try to come up with at least three tags for each post. Tagging a blog post is kind of like creating an index; it helps you and others find information in the blog.

How long do blog posts need to be?

• Use as many words as you need to get your idea across. Keep in mind that blogs are not dissertations. Most blog posts are between 100 and 500 words. This one is about 300, which makes this a good place to stop!

Tags: community, connection, getting started, welcome