Class Eight - Blackboard

June 22, 2012

The discussion question is...
What do you think about online learning or distance education? Should students be learning to take class online? Is that the wave of the future? These are questions for you to answer and consider on the discussion board.

I responded with...
I love the idea of online learning!

Both videos were supporters. The video 'High Schools Embracing Online Education' had one student saying that she liked it because she could take courses when you wanted and wherever you wanted. She also believed that because she took a different course that was not offered at her high school it helped her in getting into the college she wanted to. The 'Salman Kahn - Talk at Ted 2011' video had the creator of Khan Academy on it. He showed data that proved that students were benefiting from using a combination of his online math education and teaching in the regular classroom. The data can be broken down any which way the teacher desires to show the strengths and weakness of each student. He talked about how students who have mastered certain skills can then in return help other students who may be struggling. He claims they are "humanizing the classroom." That the typical teacher to student ratio and interactions are usually one-sided; the teacher only talks to the student if there is something in the classroom they are not understanding. Salman Khan's goal is to still have teacher to student ratios, but have them be more meaningful. He ends his talk by bringing up the notion of an emerging one world classroom. I think both videos showcased the benefits to online learning. The thing that is most important in discussion is that results are showing that online learning is improving students skills. In the first video the high school student got into the engineering program of her first choice college and in the second video a mother writes to Salman Khan about how his program helped her son with autism learn math. The 'K-12 Online Learning Article' I felt was less supportive of online learning. They talked about the benefits of it and how it has provided an important role in meeting diverse students needs and how it can help those who are struggling with issues on learning quality, student readiness, and teacher professional development. But also discussed the barriers that could keep it from becoming a success such as…concerns about the quality of the courses, the costs, the attendance rate of students, and the need for teacher training.

When I was in an undergraduate in Fairfield I took an online Psychology course over the summer. I was trying to get ahead of my studies so I could graduate in 4 years. I actually did not enjoy taking the online course. It was one of the most difficult and demanding courses I have ever taken. That particular professor required us to watch at least 1-2 hours of videos and read 5 to 10 articles due for each class. This class "met" 3 times a week, like this one. We were also required to post at least 3, 1 page, counter arguments to another students discussion that was to be posted on the discussion board. We had to be online from on the discussion board for a selected number of time. So between the high homework demands and requirement for meeting times I was not a fan of online learning at the time. But I look back at it today and realize that online learning is really limitless. It completely depends on the professor or creator of the course of program. It also depends on how willing the person on the other side of the computer is to learn. You get only the amount of learning you want from distance education. Hopefully that statement makes sense, it makes sense in my head when I read it.

I do think students should be learning to take class online. I think it is a positive skill that everyone, eventually, will need to know since we are becoming a society of technology and can do almost everything online now. It also is good for students who may not be able to express themselves fully in a classroom of 30 other students. I think Marianne was the one who mentioned something similar to this in class. She said students who may be just as smart as another student in class, but have trouble outwardly expressing themselves could be given the chance to fully express themselves through the use of online. But I also believe that students should still be in the physical classroom for part of the time. If you get anything from school it's the lesson of learning how to socialize and be around other people. A discussion on a topic in person is very different than one online.
I definitely think this is the wave of the future. We are becoming more and more technologically advanced everyday. We do shopping, dating, pay bills online already, why not education! If it makes students better students then let's do it!

Survey Monkey...
http://www.surveymonkey.com/MySurveys.aspx
I didn’t love, but didn’t hate SurveyMonkey. I think it is what it is, a tool for creating surveys. Creating the questions and answers were simple to do. But I ran into some problems trying to email it and the link out. I had to do it twice to make sure it actually was sent.

I could see how this could be used in the classroom. It would allow teachers or students to make their own surveys on a topic either chosen by them or their teacher. Each student could hand it out to their peers and see the differences or similarities in their results. Although I don’t know if something like this would be entertaining enough for students. The layout of the website is kind of dull. The only choices you are given is the color of the heading on your survey and how you want you answers laid out, whether it be only one answer or multiple answers. This also may be because it’s the free version.

The benefits of SurveyMonkey are it would allow individuals, teachers or students to create their own surveys and be able to see the direct results. The drawbacks would be there really isn’t much more than what you see. I don’t think it would keep the interest of students and they would most likely not return to the website after completing their assignment. I don’t think I’d revisit it unless I had another assignment due. Where as other websites like Wordle and Wikis I will most likely revisit.