i just completed an online survey about blogging and technology, etc. i think there may be time left to join the survey to help make the MIT survey less biased, but the time is running out. and, given that i don’t have an audience yet, i guess this post is pretty worthless. then again, i’ll use the link to see final results some time in july.
so, i just installed a new service called craftysyntax. craftysyntax is a a multi-user, multi-operator, multi-department live help support chat system. In simple terms, it’s a way to interact with people who are browsing your website. now, i don’t expect to interact live (e.g., a chat session) with all of my students — i can’t; however, i have grown a bit leery of the online lectures that i assign. i get the feeling that my lectures aren’t being read very well, if at all. now, i had the same fears about the textbook and i give my students a quiz at the end of each session in the hopes of asking some questions that will cause my students to want to read the readings. but the quiz comes on Sundays evenings and the class sessions started on the previous monday. many students will complete the class well before the quiz arrives. i want to find a way to get my students being more interactive around the lecture content. enter craftysyntax onto the scene.
craftysyntax is set up to be live help, but i have discovered that you don’t have to be live to enjoy the main benefits of this software as it pertains to e-learning. let me explain how i’ll use it . . . i want to create little buttons throughout online lectures (perhaps after about each page or 2 of the lectures). students will click on the button that is included on the webpages of the lectures. each click will pop open a new window with content and questions that i’ve written. students will answer questions that are less about being a quiz and much more about reflecting on various sections of the e-lecture. their answers are emailed to me immediately and i can then provide them with a model response to the question(s) posed.
it’s late and i am tired. more on this later.
This entry will be deleted after I get around to addressing some of these issues
I. surveymonkey.com issues
II. phpBB experiences
III. blogger.com experiences
IV. blackboard experiences
so, i had two online classes end this past week with much due this week including a final exam administered today (spring semester — 6 weeks). needless-to-say, i am extremely busy trying to grade everything. i have literature reviews, projects, finals, labs, and more to get through and figure out class participation grades from the online forums and surveys and blogs . . . and, grades are due Monday (today is Wed). egads! better yet — AAUUUGH!
i will be taking time away from the blog until i get grades in on Monday. cheers!
i guess i am settling on a blog topic for now . . . teaching online and in a cutting edge way. i will use this blog to help trace my steps as i try and improve my online teaching and as i test out new tools along the way. as some of you already know, i am using WordPress for my blogging tool. i signed up with bluehost as my internet hosting company and i am extremely happy with the services they provide for the money. they give me 50 MySQL accounts, which is pretty awesome. my blog takes up 1 SQL database, but many of the other tools i use take up a database as well, and bluehost gives me 50. my last host gave me 2, so you can guess how excited i am to be able to test so many services out for no extra cost. the nice thing about bluehost is that they make installing these extra services (e.g., WordPress, Moodle, phpBB forums, etc.) as simple as clicking a button. no knowledge of php or mySQL is required. nice.
more later as i fiddle. oh, here’s a banner to get you started (just click — and no, i do not work for the company):
this is my 3rd attempt at starting a blog. i think my first few attempts were hampered because i had no objectives for why i was starting a blog or who my audience would be for the blogs. this time, i think i’ll try writing for myself and perhaps others in the ed tech arena and see where that leads me. i’ll probably ramp this thing up in the next month or so and i’ll think things through before then.