Entries tagged as ‘elearning’
I recently learned that several colleges in Colorado now have an island, Colorado EduIsland, in Second Life:
- Colorado Community College System
- Pikes Peak Community College
- Aims Community College
- Morgan Community College
- Otero Junior College
- Community College of Aurora
- Arapahoe Community College
- Colorado Mountain College
- Red Rocks Community College
- Colorado Community Colleges Online
- Trinidad State Junior College
- Lamar Community College
- Community College of Denver
- Front Range Community College
Yesterday I stook some snapshots on the island, which is still under construction. The slideshow is here.
Categories: Education
Tagged: Colorado, elearning, second life, virtual worlds
June 5, 2009 · Comments Off
Categories: Instructional Technology
Tagged: elearning, video
January 7, 2009 · Comments Off
As I wrote last month, I used Wetpaint wikis for my on-campus classes last semester. Students in my ENG 1020 class at Metropolitan State College of Denver and my ENG 122 classes, one on campus and one online, for Red Rocks Community College were required to create bookmarking accounts on Delicious to keep track of useful websites they found during their research. Their bookmarks counted for 5% of their final grades.
As I mentioned in that previous post, for their final research journal (blog) assignment students in those classes were asked to “[d]iscuss the usefulness and effectiveness of the internet tools you used in the class: the blog [for a research journal], the Delicious bookmarks, and the wikis.”
They had the following comments about using Delicious bookmarks:
- “I especially enjoyed the bookmarks! I will definitely continue to use my delicious account in the future.”
- “The Delicious account, I thought to be a good tool for efficiently getting to the few websites I used. It also has great potential for future classes. I plan on using it for my future assignments and projects.”
- “The delicious account is awesome i will continue to use it for other papers or just in general web sites that I want to remember without using my Favorites tab.”
- “Out of all the internet resources that we used over the semester, I found bookmarks the most useful. It allowed me to keep track of any sources, that I thought could be of use to my writing.”
- “And finally I also enjoyed the delicious account, it was nice having a backup of your websites and not having to go search to find where you originally found them. Sometimes there was problems with logging in, but after I remembered my password it worked again. And I also do belive I will continue to use delicious because of its usefulness. . . .”
- “The Delicious bookmarking account was great as well. I will definately keep using this site and my account in the future. It is great for when I am working on things at a friend’s computer or at work so that I do not have to write down all my websites and information. What a clever idea.”
- “The Delicious account was also knew to me and actually something I appreciated. I used it a lot to keep track of sources and definitely plan to continue using that site in the future. I think it will really help me keep track of my research.”
- “The Delicious account was especially helpful for organizing and finding sources.”
- “Delicious is one of the best tools that I have found. It makes everything so convenient, from my research on schizophrenia to just my everyday things that I like to look up.”
- “Delicious is also really cool when working on papers, projects, and research.”
- “The delicious account was alright, truthfully I did not use very often. If I really need to find something I can just go back and search for it. It is nice to have it all with one click, but if you don’t utilize the resource to begin with, it’s pointless.”
- “The Delicious bookmarks idea was a really good idea. I didn’t find it very effective, but it’s the same story as the research blog. If I had made use of it, I could have benefitted. Instead, I just wrote down the sites I used or tried to remember them.”
- “Delicious is a very interesting website. I think it is a good idea to bookmark interesting webpages. I will try to get in the habit of doing so. With delicious the bookmarks are saved online, so that they can be accessed from any computer rather than just your own.”
- “The one that was the most useful to me is the delicious account; since I don’t always do school work on the same computer each time, it was very handy to have all of my sources available regardless of where I was.”
I definitely intend to keep this assignment for second-semester composition classes I teach in the future. I think I need to do a better job of teaching my students about tagging, both for their Delicious accounts and for their research journals. In addition, this coming semester I want to stress searching Delicious for relevant websites, possibly using Bookmarks InSuggest.
Categories: Instructional Technology
Tagged: Delicious, elearning, social bookmarking
December 17, 2008 · 1 Comment
This semester I taught three second-semester freshman composition classes: one section of ENG 1020 on campus for Metropolitan State College of Denver and two sections of ENG 122, one on campus and one online, for Red Rocks Community College. For the two of these classes that were taught on campus, and the others I taught, I used Wetpaint wikis (linked in the previous sentence) to update course schedules and post assignments. In addition, I created a College Research wiki where I provided information on research and students uploaded reviews of internet research tools.
For the last research journal assignment in the writing classes listed above, the students were asked to “[d]iscuss the usefulness and effectiveness of the internet tools you used in the class: the blog [for a research journal], the Delicious bookmarks, and the wikis.”
In their research journals, students offered the following comments about the wikis:
- “The class wiki helped me stay on top of our assignments and also was very helpful when I happened to have questions about the class.”
- “I believe the Wiki was extrememly helpful for organizing the class, the schedule, and the deadlines. I was able to plan projects based on the posted schedule and also look up information I had forgotten.”
- “I did not like the Wiki so much really confusing for me.”
- “As for the wikis, I liked them. All that I really used them for was to check my assignments. The web address is easy enough to memorize and there is no logging in, making it easy access from anywhere.”
- “I also really enjoyed the class wiki because it was a nice way to always check what home work may be due, or if you missed a class you can see what you missed. If was also a good way for the instructor to not have to worry about problems in changing the syllabus and having to print off new ones. Just post the new information or dates and when someone checks to see it is the most current information and is easy to trust. I do wish and hope that some instructors will adopt this form of class involvement, I used the wiki ALOT this semester.”
- “The class wiki was great too. It was better than having everything planned out in the hard copy syllabus. With so many changes and alterations over the semester in scheduling and deadlines, it was nice to have a location that was updated and easy to look at. (I bet it was nice for you as well Professor Clark, so everyone wasn’t emailing you constantly!)”
- “The college research wiki was helpful for sure but I don’t know that I will continue to use it regularly simply because it wasn’t so helpful that it stood out to me. There are so many ways to research things and some of the researching I did on with this was just so overwhelming. I guess it would depend on what I am looking for and how hard it is to find it.”
- “The college research wiki was useful in the way that it had a lot of different search tools lumped into one. However, some of the websites listed wasn’t much help. They would be too complicated or the information needed to be checked.”
- “The Wikis were also nice, and I found them to be much more efficient and well-organized than say blackboard.”
- “The wiki’s were a great idea I must say. Everything you need and almost any question you need to be answered is right at your fingertips on the wiki sites.”
- “The wikis were the most helpful to me. I would view the ENG 122 wiki every week to check out the course schedule, the research assignment, and find the links to other sites. I think the wikis were probably the most effective tool used this semester. The fact that I actually used them on a regular basis probably helped.”
- “The wiki was very very useful. I wished that other classes of mine used the same method. Whenever I was confused about an assignment I would check the wiki, and did not have that luxury for other classes. I found myself checking the wiki several times a week in order to be sure I knew what was going on in the class.”
To protect their privacy, even though their comments are on their public blogs, I’m not including students’ names.
I will definitely continue using the wikis as I did unless I can find something better. I just need to get around to requesting that the ads be removed since I’m using them for classes.
I plan include comments on the Delicious accounts and blogs in future posts.
Categories: Education · Instructional Technology · Web 2.0
Tagged: composition, elearning, IDT, wiki
