Experience from first online session

First time we used Wimba to hold a virtual session today and I feel good about it. There were quite a lot of points i noticed about considerations, but also I feel that I'm able to stand back from the experience and make some overall observations tht leads to thoughts and conclusions.

Firstly there was a bit of setting up time involved. Cormac had advised to get there a bit earlier and I think most of did this. Certainly at 5mins to the start when I joined most people were already there. One of the participants joined later on via phone which was an interesting experience - her voice signal was better than all but we also had to consider her lack of senses while we used Wimba's mixed model mediums. There was a bit of time spent at the beginning of the class were Cormac welcomed us all one by one and encouraged us to use our webcam or Talk button to introduce ourselves to the session. there were participants there who were distance students with whom I had not talked to, in a way that's a pity. I guess that this scene setting is important.

It was interesting see other participants in their own environment. I would imagaine that most had spent some time (if they intended to use their webcam) in dressing the environment. Cormac at one point apolagised because he blew his nose but again this might be one consideration as he does not have a room of people seemingly in front of him it's something to consider.

It was really good with Cormac leading a small presentation. I loved having the chatroom there. It was like having a running commentary/conversation on the course of the lecture without feeling as if we are being rude. I thought that it allowed us to have a joint consciousness on interpretation of the resources that Cormac was using. There was an element of peer support and chat which was good. Sometimes I felt that with such a lot on screen Cormac would regulalry loose the plot of the presentation to read the chat. I wonder what it would be like as a presenter - would he be looking to use the chat window in much the same way as he would look to his in-class students for their level of comprehension or interavctivity. It was really good, and I think it brought us to a deeper level of understanding. I think that it would have been difficult to have followed a really long presentation particularly if it had of been a 'less interesting' subject (luckily Cormac's lecture in a/sync comms was good like all of his lectures!).

There wasn't much chance for non-listening, discussion activities, for example to set tasks. By having a smaller group size I suppose that throughout the course of the lecture we were carrying out what would be a discussion activity, and again there were benefits through people being able to contribute via text chat. But not much scope for break out rooms.

There was talk about weither this would work in sharing a live event, or for students in class sat next to each other. It would be interesting to see groups present via this method.

There was a lot of analysis of the use of Txtspeech and ways of abreviating. Maybe we could talk faster and use the language we would normally use in this mode of comms.

We were excited to use this new medium and it would be good to do this again now that we know what to expect.

The group size was small. I wondered if people interacted in the same wasy as if we were holding the class face to face. People who would normally be vocal in class were also also active online. I noticed that practically all had responded and raised points using one of the methods provided by wimba. I wondered if thos that would be more vocal in class were quieter online, as if they gave everybody an equal chance to speak. I'm not sure.

Overall a very positive experience. I only lost the connection once thanks to a colleague moving me on. But I feel totally nourished by the exp.

Winning through on discussion boards

Had a bit of a problem last Friday evening. I wanted to get started with my week 3 assessed discussion as part of DET due in for this Friday. I realised that I needed to make a start in order to get some posts in, hopefully forming part of an interesting and engaging discussion with the rest of my work group. All well and good. But on logging in I found that my discussion group had had only one contributor from my group and his post was even more dense as the TPCK paper we were writing about! IT was really long, and it used very strange language involving 'sequence points' and conclusion words. The blood drained from my face as I realised that this was a use of discussion boards that I'd not yet come into contact with (formal and scripted). But I really wanted to get started so that I would not worry about the discussion all weekend so I started to compose my response and my own take on the questions Drew had posed. And before long it wasn't so difficult and I was able to understand a little more of what the poster had meant. It worries me greatly that I'm not able to think deeply about the subject in hand, that I cannot stop myself thinking subjectively, that maybe I do not have intellect as much as other members of the course. I started the post by describing my context - where I'm from in terms of academia and also my frame of mind - and I think that useful to do but it always annoys me that I have to belittle myself to others, but that's one way that I can get started.

Since my post others have posted, many of the others expressing their feelings of apprehension in joining the discussion and inexperience of academic discussion so I guess it's good that I've been able to break the ice for others and make them feel welcome. This guy continues to refer to as many journals as he can, and promises to 'tabulate' our responses for us. I'm guessing he's really into the theory side of things already and has read lots, but I can't help feel that his approach is a bit of a stiffling. We do not know how confident other people are in terms of their English reading skills or ability to understand formal academic reading.

2nd posting week 3

This is the second post so far, and finding it hard to commit to recording activities and reflections here. Unfortunately still posting on the morning before the lecture! Which makes me feel nervous about what I was hoping to achieve with this blog.

I'm finding it quite hard so far to juggle even part time study with my full time job at the uni. Its a particularly busy perios as I'm involved in helping pilot and rollout the institutions new version of Blackboard. Initially I was involved on helping a piloter migrate her unit over. Now this has gone live I've been roped in on other aspects such as repurposing 11 manuals from Blackboard into so-called knowledge base articles which is quite an involved activity and what makes things different is that my boss wants me to call on three others from different teams to help out. So I'm finding it difficult being tactfull and confident in my approach, and sometimes would much prefer to do it all by myself. Again that's the feelings of security I can get in self reliance. Plus my boss gives pretty unclear direction. And I've also got my platefull with returning and new users of TurninPoint and Turnitin.

So pretty busy with work, the 5hrs of lectures, and the 2-3hr commute everyday. Often I feel nackered after all this. I really want to start getting stuck into my Blackboard units for this course, particularly the key skills element as I'm sure it will help with this, my readings of research, writing skills, and other assessed tasks. I just find it difficult after a long day at work. And we've recently moved into a new house. So this feeling continues, but I know that if I don't act now the water level will continue to rise above my head and I will never be able to swim.

With the course I have been able to call upon new views in my day job. I like particularly the TPCK framework identified as reading in DET. I see a lot of what we do delivering very tech based training as falling quite heavily into TK in areas and motives, getting good more into TPK, but never any content. Well actually I used to teach videomaking so maybe that is my expert content. And again that piece of research described nicely the synargy or movement of the centre ground TPCKnowledge. How this moves based upon affordance of technology, requirements of pedigogy, how technical usage will rightfully change between users and applications. Often when exorting use of our technologies we gloss over shortfallings of system, but this work has set out succinctly that technical limitation are a known feature and something that the instructor has a requirwment to expect and factor in. On the same topic had an interesting email where one of our lecturers begged me to fess up to inadequacies. I didn't buy in the technology I'm just here to support it, and anyway who's listening to me? ;)

First real post

Beginning of week2 of the masters of dtce course. Last week we had introductory lectures in comms and DET. DET had a viewing of the Prisoner film followed by discussion of our thoughts of current state of play of ed tech and the promised riches that were once put forward. A run through of the unit and a varied range of tasks. I'm quite motivated by this program of study, interested particulalr on what's covered in weeks 3 with learning theory but the tasks sound fun.

On the Comms unit things also sound good, we had a breakdown of the unit, focus on assessment requirements and a chance to chat with course solleagues about there experiences and backgrounds. Most others seem to come from other countries so its really good to hear. For the main part of the assessment Cormac asked us to keep a reflective journal. I am all for doing this - I have been promoting their use to academiocs for years but ne ver put my money where my mouth is! But at the same time as I discussed with team mates there is a level of uncertainty this type of work has that you wouldn't get with an exam or essay. How do you know what you are writing will be graded as? What is the marker looking for? How does the depth of reflection present itself and be awarded?

In this country reflection pieces are big news, buit since I left school this has come in in a big way so I can't help feeling a bit apprehensive. I have had friends who would have written their journals the night before handin, inventing events to score more highly - will this work and will scoring more highly benefit me?  Coming back to this masters is a whole new experience in motivation!

Better get reading the keyskills section! Arrived at MCO

New blog setup

Not going to write too much in case this doesn't work, just created this new blog for recording my reflective journal as part of my Comms in Education unit. Trialling posting to this blog by using an email-to-blog service from blogger. Fingers crossed this works as I'm hoping to use my commute to de/construct feelings