Putting ideas into practice

Hi Jenni et al
I've taken on board some of the ideas mentioned so far and had a meeting last week with the sessional who is taking my online ER unit.  Having previously provided lots of boring information and written assessments (although we have had online discussions) we have decided to try to utilise a few interactive ideas for the unit:
1) we are both going to make welcome videos as well as our usual written 'announcement'
2) for one assessment we're getting students to post a relevant ER news article with their views on why it's an important issue/implications etc and getting other students to respond with their views
3) instead of just writing a discussion question, we're going to make a short video posing the questions for the group to discuss - we hope this will get them more engaged in the discussion.
4) for another assessment we're going to get students to make a 3 minute video presentation of an allocated case study.  Other students will have to respond - although theirs can be written.

Any feedback on whether these ideas will work and any pitfalls to be aware of?  We've asked the blackboard people for assistance with how to set it up.

Helen

Tips for new bloggers!

Since I've just played a recording Jenni made for me to help workout how to provide my blog address to the group, I thought I'd share how helpful and personalised I found this.  It was like Jenni was right there beside me helping me work out how to do it.

This is a useful experience for me because I would have assumed it was onerous to do an individual video, but apparently not.  I can see it could be useful to ensure students get the right points out of my feedback.  I sometimes wonder if they read written feedback and/or get the key points I'm trying to make.  A recording would be easier for them and much clearer.

Now I've discovered my laptop does have a camera I think I can give this a try.

Getting started

One of the first tasks for the course was to create a blog.  Sounds so simple but I found it quite confusing.  Jenni suggested google blogger was easiest so I went to the video and followed the instructions.  Only problem was they asked me to enter an address.  What address???

I made one up that was the same as my blog name but have no idea if this is attached to the course website or is out there for anyone to read.  So I think perhaps some further background on blogs for those new to them would be helpful. 

I read the various links to blog rubrics and found this very helpful.  I've set up a blog within blackboard for one of my units for semester 1.  The students have always had to submit a reflective journal so I thought they might like to do this in the form of a blog.  I think I'll link some of the information we've been provided with to my site so they have more information about what standard I expect.  I've already given them information about reflective writing so the combination should be helpful.  I particularly liked the student's trip to the zoo examples of the different levels of blogging.  I think examples are a lot clearer than trying to interpret rubrics.

On the other hand, rubrics are useful to us as academics when it comes to marking :-)

I'm now going to try to work out the various edesign groups.

Will let you know how I go in the next exciting entry!