Lisa’s Online Teaching Blog

The huge online class on Connectivism is about to start. The draft syllabus has been created. I posted my introduction to the Moodle forum, and added myself to Rodd Lucier’s Google map.

But I’m already stumped by the first requirement: creating a blog. I have a blog. It’s right here. Should I create a separate one just for this class? That seems in opposition to the whole point of the course. I think I would rather post my work here. On the other hand, it might be nice to have it separate.

I immediately began posting in Twitter to get advice, and find out what everyone else was doing. Normally this wouldn’t be my mode of operation. Usually I’d just ask the teacher and get my own information. But I won’t for several reasons:

• My students have been pestering me for individual answers to questions all week, despite the fact that most are already answered in the FAQ at my class websites — it doesn’t seem fair to do that to my instructors, especially since

• there are over 1400 people taking part in this class, from all over the world and
• the whole point of this is connecting with others

So I’ll see what all my colleagues are doing, but I’m leaning toward keeping the work right here, especially since my main goal in taking the class is to apply what I learn to online teaching.

I’ve always resisted the word “geek”. I mean, after all, it’s not like I actually write code or anything. I don’t actually make my living with a computer (I’m a teacher!), I’m not an educational technologist or instructional designer.

But then it became necessary to avoid the cable company, and the world of U-Verse. I was going to boycott the Olympics, but having heard an alternate position on Tibet from my activist student from China (another post for another time), I decided to watch after all. I have a DSL modem through AT&T, and it broke. They were so awful about replacing it, I didn’t want to give them more money by buying U-Verse for my TV. And the cable company turned out not to be the cable company any more. I haven’t had cable in years, and didn’t realize they’re all divided among various vendors offering different deals. I didn’t trust the company that offered me the good deal, and the actual TimeWarner wanted me to pay a bunch for two weeks of Olympics.

So I geeked out. I had read that nbcolympics.com was going to broadcast a lot of the games. I borrowed one of those really big screen televisions (like I’d buy one), and tried to hook up my iBook to it. I had a cable for that from hooking it up to an external monitor, so no problem. But when I went to the website, it informed me that to use Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology to watch the games, I needed to be on an Intel Mac.

So I disconnected by iMac from everything on my desk, moved it into the living room, and had to borrow a special cable to hook it up to the TV. That meant setting up my iBook to the external monitor on my desk (luckily I found that cable in the old box for my iBook). But the iMac couldn’t play sound into the big TV, only video. So I got out some USB speakers I use for my iBook, and plugged them in.

Between NBC on my little antenna and nbcolympics.com, I was able to watch Olympics happily (even the equestrian and synchronised swimming events!) for two weeks. So yeah, now I’m a geek. Except for those low-tech sticky notes stuck to my computer.

Thanks to Stephen Downes, I now know the word fisking, the analysis of an argument point by point, with comments interspersed among the main text. It helps me contextualize the way we often respond to emails, taking out the bits we want to respond to, and commenting inline.

The argument is over whether such a technique is good or bad, and of course, it is both. Fisking involves dividing someone’s argument into bits. And usually, such an argument was constructed in prose for a reason, to lead the reader from one point to another through meaningful transitions. So in a sense, fisking pulls points out of context, which is bad. But it also can highlight inaccuracies and faulty reasoning that can affect the whole argument, so that’s good.

It’s like a form of public glossing, but instead of writing the note to yourself in the margin, you’re writing it to your email correspondent or, if you’re doing it on a blog, to the internet public.

Steve Dembo, a Twitter pal, asked today if anyone had a photo of themselves and their Second Life avatar, side by side. What an interesting idea.

Easily the most fun I’ve had all day!

Like 1,200 other people, I’m planning to take George Siemen’s and Stephen Downes‘ Connectivism class through the University of Manitoba in September.

I listened to the planners’ podcast at EdTech Talk this morning, and it sounds like they’re expecting only about 30 people to take the class for credit (I will be doing so, and think it will be many more than 30). There is already a mail list, a blog, a Google group, a wiki, a tag (CCK08) and numerous groups forming by language and location. The instructors are organizing for what is already a welcome experiment in open education, a class which is a model of its own learning theory. I am spending the morning organizing feeds in preparation.

One of the intriguing elements of this class is that its organization seems to be paralleling what we’re doing with the new Program for Online Teaching Online Teaching Certificate. In terms of assessment (of interest to every student, even me) the Connectivism instructors sound like they’re developing versions of self-assessment through blogging as a primary tool. This is also what we’ve created for the Program. As instructors accumulate workshops and outside information while learning how to teach online, they are required to share by using a blog, wiki, or web page.

The intention is both documentation and building of community among our online instructors, which has been sorely lacking. People show up for workshops, we get rave reviews, but then I tend to hear from participants individually, rather in a group setting (such as the forums on the POT Moodle site). At the same time as I encourage more discussion online, I hope that the certification plan will lead to more sharing of technology methods and pedagogy.

I originally thought that the Connectivism class would be of most help with my teaching history, and I’m sure it will. But the overlaps are making me think that it might be even more helpful for POT.