Assignment 1 - Introduction

Hi. I'm Tricia Gleason, an MA Candidate in the Intensive Technology and Education program. My educational background is on the bottom right of the blog page if you are interested to see it. After more than 20 years of working in the fields of music and elementary education, as both an instrumental music teacher (band and strings) and an elementary classroom teacher (PS-6) I came to TC in 2007 to begin the program in CCTE to learn to better integrate technology into my classroom teaching and curriculum development. In the past few years, this has led in a sort of round about way, to work in Library Media, and I currently am the library media specialist at Smithtown Christian School on Long Island, and because of my coursework at TC found myself becoming the unofficial webmaster for my school websites, which are being upgraded. In addition to the website work, my library duties, (and private music lessons, which I teach on the side) I also manage the staff e-mail accounts and work with several others in administrating the facebook and twitter accounts for our school.

• What made [me] interested in this course?

After four years in the program, I am finally nearing the finish line, as this is my last course. My graduate project is to create an online course for high school students that would provide them with experience using options that go beyond their default of using a regular search engine for doing research. Because of that, I am curious as to what is going on the field of online learning for K-12 students, and so this course very much caught my eye. I am looking forward to what we will learn.

• What experience do [I] have with online learning (if any)? Was it positive or negative and why? I have taken two online courses at TC and a few work-related webinars online. My own experience has been mostly positive but a bit mixed. I didn't enjoy my first online graduate course too well; it was a course on GoGoEd.com that was asynchronous and text-based only, consisting entirely of articles and notes that my classmates and I had to read and study at our own pace, which meant we could all be working on different lessons at the same time, and our evaluation was a series of multiple choice quizzes based on the readings. Even though there was a discussion board, and the interaction was often stimulating and allowed for thoughtful response, I found the time-factor frustrating. It took a long time to type a response that could be spoken in a short amount of time. With discussion taking place over the course of a week or a period of weeks, the time lag made it akin to having a discussion where others enter a room at different times and say their piece and then leave and miss the rest of the discussion. The last one to post on the discussion forum got to say his/her piece to an "empty room".

The second on-line course I took was outstanding. We had the option of taking the course synchronously or asynchronously, as there was a regularly scheduled class meeting time. My classmates and I connected remotely from all over the world using Adobe Connect, and saw our instructor and his powerpoint presenting live via webcam. We had the option of using our own webcams too, but generally didn't use them, but we had live audio and could either speak or chime in via chat to ask questions or add to the discussion. There was a feature that allowed for private discussion while the instruction was going on, so those of us who needed technical assistance to fix an audio problem could privately ask the TA for help without interrupting the instructor. There was a way for the instructor to post short polls or surveys and tabulate responses during class time, and even option for breaking the class up into small groups for discussion during class time. If a student couldn't login at the time of the session, the sessions were recorded and we were provided with links that allowed us to view the entire presentation at a later date, including all the chat and discussion that went on during the session. It also meant that even if we attended the session we had the link to listen to the entire presentation again to review or reinforce learning. That particular online learning experience allowed me to see great potentiality for online courses as vehicles to keep students engaged and facilitate depth of learning.