Drape's Takes

In their book entitled Distance Education: A Systems View, Michael Moore and Greg Kearsley provide an informative summary of their view of what determines the success of distance teaching.

What determines the success of distance teaching is the extent to which the institution and the individual instructor are able to provide the appropriate structure in design of learning materials, and the appropriate quantity and quality of dialogue between teacher and learner(s), taking into account the extent of the learners’ autonomy.

The more highly autonomous the learners, the greater is the distance they can be comfortable with (i.e. the less the dialogue and the less the structure). For others, the goal must be to reduce distance by increasing dialogue (ranging from online asynchronous interaction, perhaps using the telephone, or at the most extreme, face-to-face contact), while providing the security of sufficient structure. (p. 234)

Translation as it relates to OpenPD:


Source:

• Moore, M. G. & Kearsley, G. (2005). Distance Education: A Systems View. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

Technorati Tags: distanceed openpd

So, yesterday's last post may have sounded a little negative. Sorry. Sort of.

It's just that this battle to improve teacher performance often falls on deaf ears.

Needless to say, in spite of the many teachers that refuse to incorporate technology into their teaching, there are many really good things happening out there. I will share two.

Good Thing #1 - Sheradee Bradfield - Midvale Middle School

Ms. Bradfield is doing tremendous things with her social studies classes. She learned about geocaching a few months ago and decided to use it with her students. She created a cache near her school (about a mile away from her school - it's safer that way). In the cache, she put a total of three travel bugs - one for each class. Each travel bug has its own "goal", all decided by her students. Remarkably, one of the class travel bugs has traveled nearly 19,000 miles since its departure last November (it's currently in Germany, at this location: N 49° 08.692 E 007° 59.471).

Whoa.

Imagine the discussions Ms. Bradfield can now have with her students about geography and culture because their class travel bug is currently circling the globe! Without this technology, such conversations would never take place - or would be forced, at best. The picture below is of one of her class travel bugs in Italy - perfect for her social studies unit about the Roman empire.


Good Thing #2 - The Horizon Project

This morning I received an email from Julie Lindsay inviting me (and other Horizon Project members) to join her in Elluminate. Unfortunately, I was about 20 minutes too late to join the party, but I was able to talk with Barbara Stefanics, one of the Horizon teachers that also joined late. Ms. Stefanics teaches eleventh-grade students at the Vienna International School (in Austria).


I have to say that I was extremely impressed with both Ms. Stefanics and Elluminate. Ms. Stefanics seemed very confident and gave me a great tour. The Elluminate interface is very clean. It allows you to literally hold class with participants around the world (white-board and all). Without this technology, participant interaction (and probably instruction) would not be as effective.

One of my favorite features in Elluminate is the audio: only one person can talk at a time. To talk to the class, simply click the button - allowing your microphone to be heard, displaying your name, and disallowing anybody else from interrupting. We need one of these microphones in traditional, face-to-face classrooms!

So, for all of you teachers that are doing great things out there, keep up the good work! If you don't slack, I won't gripe. : )

I jumped back in to Second Life yesterday. I had visited SL about a year and a half ago and wasn't extremely impressed - I really couldn't figure out why anyone would want a second life - what's wrong with our first lives? Nevertheless, with all of the recent hype, I had to give it another try - besides, I want to have my A-game on when I attend the upcoming Second Life Best Practices in Education Conference on May 25.

My initial reaction? Second Life has grown up a bit. I quite like my new SL name (Thr33R1ng Binder) and was very impressed with the new tutorials offered on orientation island. Furthermore, the entire interface seems more responsive than before. All in all I was quite pleased. I teleported to ISTE's area and even checked out Drexel Island.

Needless to say, I am excited to participate in the upcoming conference, and promise to keep an open mind about what is presented. To be honest, I have only one concern about using SL for education: How can we ensure that the SL environment is safe for kids? As an SL newbie, I welcome your input.

I can see huge potential for virtual worlds as an educational tool - especially for distance education (and possibly a much needed tool if gas prices continue to soar).

Today I stumbled across an interesting post by The Four Eyed Technologist. He has spent a good deal of time immersed in the Second Life world and feels that it has true educational value. If you're interested in exploring Second Life, tonight would be a great time to do it.

Peggy Sheehy of Suffern Middle School will be presenting at ISTE Second Life tomorrow, April 24th, at 6:30 SLT (Pacific Standard Time) on Rampos Island, her island on Teen Second Life.

As a pioneer in the area of Second Life Educational Immersion, this is a can’t miss if you are considering Second Life in the classroom, pondering the strengths and limitations of Second Life, and/or figuring out how Teen SL works.

Now for my take on the whole deal. Second Life will never be my first life. Nevertheless, having spent an hour or two in Second Life, I have to admit that it provides an interesting platform for distance learning. In the above photo, for example, various students from around the world are watching as one student/teacher is showing off a PowerPoint presentation.

So what do you think? How would you use Second Life to teach? How would you use it to learn?

Several comments to my previous post addressing the educational uses of Twitter deserve mention. As a result of their comments, I am far more inclined to tweet with my students than I was in the past.

• Thom Allen and Julie Lindsay bring up the fact that in Twitter you're only allowed 140 characters per post. In thinking about using Twitter as a storytelling tool, I think that this limit might be a good thing. How many students do you know that freeze when they're presented with a blank piece of paper and asked to write? Perhaps with this limit, some students won't feel as much pressure in writing - anyone can write 140 characters, but writing pages might be difficult.
• Thom continues, "What do you get from Twitter that you couldn't get with MSN or Yahoo! messenger systems?" To this, my one-word response is "boundaries" (the 140 character limit) - again, boundaries aren't always bad. In elaborating, however, I must confess that I prefer Twitter to traditional chat. The reason I prefer Twitter is because of it's un-intrusive nature. Have you ever been working hard on something only to be interrupted by someone wanting to chat at length with you? Twitter is great because you are "chatting", but only with those that want to listen - there is no pressure to return tweets upon receiving them from your friends.
• Julie's work with the Horizon Project is amazing! They're using Twitter "to facilitate communication between students in different countries. Twitter allows them post regular updates on what they have been working on as an addition to their wiki discussion tab messages. See HERE and HERE." Way too cool! I love seeing the student wikis full of Twitter badges!
• Finally, Rahhb (no link provided) brings up a fascinating scenario:

"Imagine a professor taking both direction of discussion and questions from his class via twitter. Display the tweets on the prof's screen so they can see what's next, or if people agree. Distance-learning is instantly enabled so that class members who may be dialed in audibly or via video can reply and respond and communicate without additional hardware/software."

Too much fun - way too easy. Thank you, Rahhb, Julie, and Thom - your insights are invaluable.