5410 - Week 5 - R/D9

Class Reflection

I have not found the technical exercises to be difficult at this point. I have played with all of the tools we have done thus far in some capacity or another but have not really found a good enough reason to use the a wiki, blog or social bookmarking sites in my everyday life, so this class has given me an opportunity to do more than just create something and let it sit. I still however cannot think of any reasons that I would use a wiki, blog or social bookmarking sites after this class is over.

While I understand that we are using the blogs to post our discussions on to gain experience using a blog, I would not use a blog this way in a classroom. It is much easier to have everyone’s submissions and replies on one site (like the blackboard discussions). The reader does make it much more manageable, but it is still a pain to add the feed link for each and every comment I make so I can make sure to follow up with it.

The only time I attempted to use a wiki before this class was for Christmas dinner. I gave my family access to edit the blog so they could say what they were bringing and everyone else could see it. However, my user adoption rate was 0. They all tried to access it but I could tell it was more of a hassle for them to turn on the computer than to just call me and ask me what was going on. When it came time to ask them to edit it, that was out of the question. Although my Mom did just sign up for facebook yesterday… this will be interesting to see how it turns out.
A lot of reading and reflection is crammed into 8 weeks of class time. I could not imagine keeping up with them if I was also new to technology. If there isn’t anything that can be cut out of the R/D projects, I would be easier and less overwhelming if they were tied together in some way instead of just doubled up from a regular semesters class. There were a few cases so far where the wording still followed a 15 week semester so it was hard to figure out what exactly I was supposed to do for the 8 week class, I think/hope I was able to correctly figure out what was to be done, but it was frustrating spending valuable homework time just figuring out what all I needed to do.

As I have a technical background and this is my last class before graduation, I am about as far as one can get from being the student that this class is aimed toward, so I don’t think I got as much out of it as I would if I fit the description of an educator just starting out. However, if I did fit that description, I think this would be a great class for what it is intended for. Judging from the responses of others in this class, it might be nice to offer a hybrid, CVIT or face to face class in addition to the online class though since technology can be such an intimidating thing for those who do not use it every day. Having a class like this with a body in the room to point you in the right direction can be a wonderful step to getting comfortable enough with technology to do well in the rest of the classes in the program.