One of my current students uses her dog, Bishop, as her profile image. I love that she does that. It gives me a warm feeling about her. She mentioned in one of our discussions that she chose him because she was concerned about her privacy and security.

She said:

I think it is funny that you mention my use of my Bishop for an image. I had a reason. In a class we had on cyber security, it said to never use a real image of yourself unless you want it broadcasted. We learned how to build an Avatar. I do not like my Avatar because when I made it, the selections did not include large or handicapped people as a choice. Everything was “beautiful people” and personally, I think that is very wrong. I have never gone out there to look further to see if there are other places (I used Yahoo) to see if you can build a real person. So I chose Bishop as he is my familiar.

As soon as i read her post i did a google search and started playing with 2D avatar generators to see what i could come up with. Below are links to the ones i found an played with. The resulting images i have inserted in to this post.

Avatar Generators:

1. http://www.zwinky.com/
2. http://www.faceyourmanga.it/faceyourmanga.php?lang=eng
3. http://unique.rasterboy.com/
4. http://www.tektek.org/dream/
5. http://illustmaker.abi-station.com/index_en.shtml
6. http://www.doppelme.com/
7. http://en.gravatar.com/
8. http://www.gamedition.com/31/Avatar_Creator

Articles:

• http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/nowak.html
• http://sophtopia.blogspot.com/2008/08/realistic-avatar-shapes-mmm-no.html
• http://maqtanim.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/cool-avatar-generator/

These last 2 are my SecondLife 3D avatars. I lived in my newbie SL skin (left) for almost a year before changing her to a more “realistic” me (right) : ) Not sure why, but i never messed with her looks much till i saw someone walk by that looked just like me, and then i started thinking about it and wanted her to look more like the real me, so i plumped her up and got some “good” hair to look more like mine. Then i didn’t touch her looks again till i had to do a presentation in SL (http://etap687.edublogs.org/secondlife-if-my-avatar-could-talk/) and wanted to represent myself more realistically and less like a newbie. Have not really touched her since… i had a hard time finding appropriate clothes. I think about the online representation of self often. Colleagues and i have talked about, especially in the hyper-sexualized world of secondlife. I note it everytime i log into some place on the social web and see how friends and colleagues choose to represent themselves, or when i am required to upload yet another image to another profile somewhere… I am charmed by those who choose animals or some image that whispers insight into the person. I like that invention and creativity very much. None of the new little avatars i generated “really” look like me. There is a suggestion of me, i suppose. Brown skin, hair, and eyes. long curly hair… i really like the little one with the black skirt and shirt, but i will not be running around the web changing my profile images to any of these anytime soon.

I understand and respect the need for privacy, and for some, not wanting one’s “real” image floating about the net. For some there may be a sense of loss of control. I guess i feel “in charge” of what i put out there.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/13/research.privacy
http://news.research.ohiou.edu/notebook/index.php?item=467
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/technology/internet/13iht-cache13.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-social-networks-bring
http://technology.findlaw.com/articles/00006/011161.htmlhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/
http://internet.suite101.com/article.cfm/how_we_represent_ourselves_on_the_internet
http://savageminds.org/2008/06/16/the-presentation-of-self-in-virtual-life/
http://internet.suite101.com/article.cfm/online_image_is_representation_of_our_real_self

To prepare for this term, i copied the course from last term and updated it. I’ve had some challenges with this along the way. Links broke, i had to recreate several discussions, and any student-level documents that i had as part of the course i had to recreate as well. It has been interesting. i made a few modifications to the course based on feedback from the students from last semester. Mostly in the instructions to activities so that things would be clearer from the beginning. I also decided to keep the students from last term in the course diigo group instead of setting up a new one for the new course – to build community.

I am very concerned about the amount of work the course will be in terms of my own course management. Last term it nearly killed me. And my husband and family were not amused by the amount of time i spent on it. Part of the issue is manually having to tabulate all the discussion gradings. I have not made any modifications in my approach to discussion, and so expect that it will be a lot of work again. If only the course management system did this for me automatically, i could spend more time interacting in the course a less time trying to count and track all the discussion ratings. i have heard that a newer version of moodle does this… alas, i don’t believe that is the version we are in.

In any case, i am really looking forward to teaching this course and learning lots from my students. I still have to go check my rubric, and the sun is coming up  : )

You can follow our course announcements on twitter and have a look at our icebreaking activity.  I also really look forward to peering into my students reflections as they take their course through their own blogs. Links to their blogs are on this blog, http://etap687.edublogs.org.

here we go!

Anyway, in the beginning, i followed everyone that followed me. I guess i thought it was the polite thing to do, and i was just pretty much stunned that anyone that i didn’t already know would want to follow me.

I don’t do that any more. And i am much more selective about whom i will follow and let follow me. i now intentionally want to filter noise from signal. Some people will twitter about any/all random thoughts in their heads. i use twitter primarily professionally and to document my exploration of the social web and instructional technologies (this is my signal), but as i have said in a previous post, i have experienced a blurring with my professional self, and so you will find in my stream occasional personal tweets about my life/family (this is my noise). I look for a balance of noise and signal, and where there is more signal than noise.

So, how do i decide if i will follow you, or follow you back?

• I look at your twitter profile. do you seem interesting in some way? i followed a guy who said he likes  pudding @ryenyc. and i am following a cat @fluffythecat who diligently tweets meow every day.
• what is your name? are you a person or a business? are you a real person? i will block most businesses that are not edtech focused. i will block most vendors unless i use/like their product. it is astounding how fast some of these vendors will tweet/follow you when you mention their product. Sometimes i am impressed, sometimes it feels slimy.
• where are you located? not that it matters. i am just curious. and interested.
• where do you work? if you work for the ministry of education in Colombia, i am interested. If you are the Sr. Director of Tech Evangelism at BB, not so much.
  
• how do you define yourself in your bio? You can loose me here, if you say something stoopid.
• do you provide a web link to a blog or site with more info about you? i rarely follow someone with no web link. lately, i have been DMing (direct messaging) people without links that follow me asking them for a link to get to know them better before i decide if i want to follow them.
• how many people do you follow? if you follow 1,259,537 people, i will NOT be 1,259,538.
• how many follow you? if 1,259,537 people follow you, i might be curious about that, but i probably won’t follow you unless you are obama or brent spiner.
• what do you do? higher ed faculty, k12teachers, instructional technologists will likely get a follow, people shilling books or services will most likely be blocked.
• i look to see how many updates you have and when you joined. If you joined yesterday, have 2 updates, and 1,369 followers, it’s a pass.
• i look to see what your ratio of posts to @replies are. If you only post you are suspect. If you are @replying only you are suspect. I look for a balance.
• i look at whom you @reply to and what you are talking about. If your @reply conversations are too personal or i can’t figure them out…
• I look at how often you post. if you post too much, you are irritating. If you don’t post enough, you are not relevant.
• I also look at whom you are following and who follows you. I also look to see if we have people we follow or interact with in common.
• i then look through 2-3 full screens of your twitter stream. if i learn one thing from you, i will follow you. all it takes is one thing.   : )

My purpose for twittering is for professional development and community and to extend my PLN. i want to engage in interaction on things that are of interest to me with people that interest me or that know more than me about things that i am interested in -  namely instructional technology. I also love twittering conferences and documenting my web2.0 experiences. I also use twitter to update my facebook status feed.

Without a doubt or without any reservation i say that twitter has been the most powerful influential professional development experience in my life. It is a vibrant exciting living expression of my community of practice. It gives me access to experts all over the world that i might never have met otherwise. and it gives me a forum in which to document my work, express myself, interact with others, and establish my own professional presence, credibility, and level of expertise.

it not an overstatement for me to say that i heart twitter  :  )

i use the social web professionally extensively. In addition to in my online teaching, i use the social web to connect with colleagues. I would characterize this as my primary use of the social web. In the beginning i used it exclusively professionally- to talk to and keep in touch with my professional community, and to share with them what i do – an amalgamation of professional networking, collaboration, and increasingly a significant component of my professional development -my own personal learning environment – helping me to keep up with who and what is going on in my field. I am always aware of my digital persona… I always have in the back of my mind when i post anywhere and anything “Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium, will read this…” : ) And that awareness is very interesting to me when calibrated against my desire to authentically represent myself online. Yes, i filter. i am very conscious of my professional persona and protecting that. I am very well known in the national online education community and am adjunct faculty at UAlbany. i put energy and care into my digital presence and my online persona. The personal stuff creeping in is something i can’t control completely. I am sensitive and aware and i monitor.

A serendipity that i did not anticipate is this blurring of my personal and professional selves… i resisted it somewhat for the first 2 years and just in the last half year or so i have slowly noticed myself letting that blur happen and enjoying it…partly because friends and family have found me, and partly because i want my students and my professional community of followers to understand that i am multi-dimensional – that i am not just what i do. In my bios, one will note, that i have always said that i am 1. Isa’s mom, 2. an artist. and 3. that i know a little something about online learning : ) So this awareness of myself as a multi-dimensional being, and diligence at representing myself as such, has always been there unconsciously emblazoned publicly on all my profiles.

I am sprinkled all over the social web, twitter, diigo, delicious, facebook, seesmic, linkdin, spock, plaxo, youtube, slideshare, flickr, and on and on and on . . . There is something about the presentation of self online that requires these presences, and the little artifacts posted to each, to give one substance/credibility/real-ness online – they are a digital commodity – used to gain status, relevance – or merely as proof of one’s existence. I think of them as my footprints, a history and journal of sorts of my meanderings through the social web, and my thoughts and interactions along the way. I also think of them as extensions or facets of myself that when looked at as a whole do a pretty good job of representing me and what i care about. These little artifacts give me digital substance, that if lost, would be like loosing my memories, erasing my existence, and if deleted purposefully, would feel self-injurious… Richard Smyth has an extremely engaging notion of memories in the digital age http://www.slideshare.net/rsmyth/mnemonomics that has got me thinking a bit too about my memories and the digital pushpins and footprints that i leave online in facebook, twitter, etc., and that make up my digital self…these little inane pushpins in the time line of my social web life have become increasingly and inevitably a blurring of my personal and professional selves …  i have been thinking about this a lot.

Richard talks about technology as aides de memoir – mnemonomics (managing memory) he describes as a theory for understanding web2.0,  communications technology, and  social networking as collaborative memory. Memory he says, started out as oral stories stored in human brains and exchanged f2f. Literary memory followed with the alphabet and print stored in books and libraries. Today, he says, our memory is increasingly stored electronically and digitally – evinced in social bookmarking, for example. He talks about the collective intelligence inherent in social networking, where who you know becomes how you know – epistemology as community. He asks: how is web2.0 changing the nature of memory? how do these technologies supplement our memory? how do they free our minds from having to remember?

From the profile fotos i post, to the little bios i am obliged to write on all the sites i join, i have noticed things. But, i only started noticing when they changed - recently. For example, since 1994 i have had one digital photo of myself that i have used professionally for all my profiles, publications, online and in print, etc. When i first digitized it 14 yrs ago, i probably “selected” it as a good likeness, nice composition, and a pretty image of me. After that though it was just alex.jpg, the image i used for everything. I didn’t think about it at all – for 14 years . . . in the facebook world where people change their profile images like socks, it just never occurred to me. (The same was true for me in SecondLife – i lived in my newbie skin for more than a year – i just didn’t occur to me to change it.) It was not until my friend, Thomas McGuiggan, from high school friended me that it started occurring to me. I wanted Tom to know what i look like today. I noticed. That old grainy orange-ish 14-year-old image of me just seemed wrong somehow. One minute the image was real enough, the next i felt self conscious that it was not my authentic self. I have changed my FB profile 3 times since February 2009. Not really sure why. Vanity -maybe. Because i can -probably. Because i am now aware of it- i think.

I think it really started when Elizabeth Hanson friended me in FB about 8 months ago … she is a friend that i feel really close to and love from college. She put up pictures from college, we talked in FB, other friends of ours joined…i got “engaged” in the whole FB thing … when the 25 random things meme went ’round Elizabeth’s was one of the first i read. I loved it. (I have a thing for a well turned phrase and Elizabeth is an artist with a pen.) I didn’t get tagged right away, but loved reading the notes of my friends and acquaintances. When i was tagged, i LOVED writing my 25 things. I had no problem coming up with 25 things … my master list was over 60 items. I also worked very hard on that list. I spent time making sure they were each just so. I also noticed that some of them, though completely “me,” I just could not post (even though part of me really wanted to). . . And so i filtered … consciously… and noticed that i was filtering. I had a conscious sense of observing myself prune that list down, however, interestingly enough i did not notice till after i posted, that none of my things have to do with what i do : ) weird right?! …not one of my 25 things random things about me has anything to do with my job … i totally love that! And i don’t understand it. It was a very interesting exercise for me that may have been a tipping point of sorts in some way.

Here is the time line as best as i can figure – June 2, 2008 and then again on June 13- i posted my first non work-related videos on YouTube. In August 2008 Elizabeth friended me and posted old college photos of us and our friends.  January 6, 2009, my friend Kevin Lim twittered and blogged about changing the way he uses twitter (http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=2407) January 7 i posted my first twitpic – http://twitpic.com/photos/alexpickett - note that none of my twitpics are work related – these are posted to my twitter stream – the point being that this is not just in FB, but that this phenomenon is happening in all my social sites. January 9th Thomas friended me in FB. January 27 i read my friend Alex Ried’s wonderful blog post on why blogging is so hard (http://www.alex-reid.net/2009/01/why-blogging-is-hard.html). Approximately on February 1, 2009 Elizabeth deleted just about everything on her wall. (This astounded me. How could she do that – like she was erasing her memoires or part of herself – she points to her Virgo nature and penchant for tidiness and thinks of the FB wall as ephemera…) February 3 i posted my FB 25 random things about me. February 11th i changed my FB profile picture for the first time. February 15, pondering my friend’s wall deletion, I posted the question on seesmic, do you delete stuff you post? Around this same time i started actually visiting and hanging out in FB regularly, where previously i merely had my various feeds auto update my wall.

Alex Reid said in his digital digs blog post that these mundane little things. . .

…may not matter to you, but they matter to me. Of course twitter also becomes a way of sharing interesting things discovered online and having quick conversations, so it is not all daily minutiae. But my point is that even that minutiae can become a way of creating a networked identity that becomes a basis for stronger and more productive connections.

Kevin Lim in his theory is the reason blog post waxing philosophical about twitter noted:

Pragmatically, most would say that the conversation is a signature of being human, which in itself is a value which we cannot yet reproduce mechanically simply by constantly tweeting links. The reward of twitter was that our connections felt alive whenever someone @replies (reciprocates).

In a low-resolution environment of 140 characters, I thought I could get by with being human through a simple machine. On the contrary, twitter was about the celebration of being human, and I had a choice whether to partake in it.

My new friend George Siemens just wrote in his newsletter:

The internet, specifically social networking tools like Twitter, assaults the boundary between our private and public selves. The many representations of “George” – father, son, brother, employee, friend – move toward one on Facebook. Social networking and social theory explores this blurring of identities through Erving Goffman’s (a connection to Manitoba!) work: “front stage” and “back stage” concepts have been a useful way to understand social life. Goffman wrote in 1959 of how we keep certain information private, part of the process of impression management.” Impression management is not solely under our control. If you have presented at a conference, commented on a blog, or had someone take an image of you and post (and tag) on Flickr, you exist online. Others participate in defining and broadcasting who we are.

I don’t like thinking about it as “impression management.” And yet, there it is, no matter what i believe, we all filter and consciously or unconsciously make choices about how we represent ourselves online, in person, on the phone… etc. True, some people are (as my friend Kevin Lim says) more noise than signal – but being all signal is not right either. I want a balance in my life, and i want to connect with people that balance.

So, Sarah, i want to know that you found your pink hair dye today, and to see photos of the socks you knit, what you are making for dinner, and that your doppler is out of date. Your tweets are relevant to me. Alex, i want to know that you have contactors coming to your house today, about the demo in your department meeting, and that you showed your little girl twitter – and that you have a new blog post. I like the snark you sometimes have in your voice. Kevin, i LOVE hearing your twitter voice, knowing what you are eating for breakfast/lunch and what you are doing while you eat, and knowing that you get turned on by pedagogically-focused gaming links : ) George, I am interested in hearing about your parent-teacher conference and when you are looking for coffee… Because your “noise” gives you context and makes me feel closer, more connected to you and our common human-ness, which makes you more real to me, helps me trust you, and makes your “signal” to me, and its impact – that much more powerful.

I am what i bookmark and what digital breadcrumbs i leave about the net. I am who i know and who i interact with online. I am known by the digital pushpins and footprints i leave about. AND i am more than what i do for a living. It is really important to me that people know that – and that people know me – my real multi-dimensional self.

There is evidence to suggest that a strong sense of community in the classroom helps reduce student feelings of isolation and “burnout” associated with higher attrition levels in both classroom-based and distance learning. A positive sense of community also promotes the likelihood of student support and information flow, commitment to group goals, cooperation among members and satisfaction with group processes and efforts [e.g. Rovai (2002)].  Classroom Community is comprised of various elements of community including trust, spirit, connectedness, belonging, membership, various forms of support, and the rich, and productive milieu that communities of practice can engender for teaching and learning.

In my work with faculty helping them to become effective online instructors, i work very hard to establish a strong personal online voice to demonstrate/model online personality as a component of my teaching presence and to establish a positive social presence and sense of class community that you can only cultivate by building trust with individuals. As an online instructor I set the tone for this in my online course by how i speak, interact, and present myself. I also facilitate and model it for my students, so they have a sense that I am a real person, and that it is ok for them to be real too in the online class environment. This does not mean being chummy with your students, or lax, or anything that you are not. This means representing yourself authentically and as a real multidimensional being online, so that your students will “know” who you are, can judge and gauge their relationship with you, and have a sense of you. If as, we believe, learning is a social process, then it is essential to develop the ability to effectively design and facilitate effective online social presence and class community in online teaching and learning environments and the faculty that teach in them.

So i say … teach them to fish instead of giving them the fish…make them do the work… don’t do it for them, take every opportunity to challenge your students to do most of the work in your course… because if they are doing the work, they are doing the learning, figure out ways to make them teach each other, that is how people learn… if you view everything and every interaction in the course as an opportunity to express that concept and if you are able to scrutinize yourself, your design, your actions and interactions, etc., you will be a better educator.

It is harder because you want to help them, make sure they get it, make sure they know what you know…. but!!!! that is a trap… remember if you do the work, who does the learning?!!! It is harder also because they can’t all fish right away… But you have to resist the temptation…just remember that if you give them the answers/information, they are not learning anything really . . . learning takes time, it is a process, that like fishing requires patience and practice, and it is not something you cause to happen… it is something the student chooses to do…

It is also something that you, as the course designer/instructor can facilitate.

How?? Have them reflect, apply, report, explain, defend, refute, question, self-assess, summarize, synthesize, and analyze their engagement with course content and as a member of the class community.

Design learning activities that make students make their thinking visible to you.

Along the way, FYI, i also found this gem Seven rules for establishing a corporate presence on Twitter and viddler (”…So, to sum things up: you should use Viddler. The end.” This made me think of homer simpson (which makes me think of my husband – which makes me warm and fuzzy), laugh, and love the person behind that voice… same as the wufoo guys.) also incredibly cooltool that i can’t wait to play with.

So i “met” Kathy Sierra through her blog creating passionate users googled her to learn more… to see if i could find a list of presentations on her (thinking about SLN SOLsummit) found Kathy Sierra on “building a Global Microbrand” on slideshare and by similar serendipity “met” Garr Reynolds, read about his presentation zen, and was treated to his preso on brain rules. Found them both on twitter and followed them immediately. This has been my learning journey today … it has been a very satisfying string of learning experiences and encounters today and documenting it has been an interesting exercise…

This is a long way to get to what i finally wanted to get to, which is Kathy Sierra’s blog post i code like a girl that resonated with me, and got me thinking. My six year-old daughter has said several times over the last couple of days, “and mami…he screamed like a little girl. [then lots of giggles]” I asked her “where did you hear that expression?” “why do you think that is funny?” “what does that mean?” She no doubt heard it from Hunter, or Adam, or Dylan, or Arlo,

who in turn got it from their daddies, or perhaps their coaches, or more probably from some TV show… or movie… that i let her watch… she is such a sponge. It hit me like a brick in the face. My precious little daughter parroting something so superficially funny, and seemingly innocuous, yet such a simple insidiously powerful negative statement. I am a short round Colombian woman. I am an administrator of a large (the 2nd largest) university wide program in a large (the largest) bureaucratic university system in a sea dominated by old(er) white male suits. i am an educator, instructional designer and technologist, and artist and a mom in a world dominated by application developers/domain administrators/CIOs/, who are generally neither educators nor right-brained, and who are generally usually male. I not only code like a girl. I supervise like a girl, i administrate like a girl, i conduct meetings like a girl. I also

• “write like a girl”
• “express myself like a girl”
• “design like a girl”
• and… i “teach like a girl!”

All of my today has a theme… the emotional voice found in the wufoo pages, being asked about my feelings, thinking about creating passionate users, thinking about community (building it, sustaining it, nurturing it) at work with faculty and instructional designers, at school with the parent council web space, and of course in my summer ETAP687 course. So it is official… i teach like a girl and am proud of it : )

here is what my students say:

One of the most thorough and nurturing instructors I have had in my academic career. Helped to shape us into better leaders and teachers

Difficult course but learned the most of any other course I have taken in years. Too much work for the 3 credits, though.

Really helpful and great personality Would have enjoyed taking the class F2F more so than online, but did enjoy and appreciate the class.

Great course, I hope to take another class with Professor Pickett again

Great course, and a terrific teacher. Lots of work, but worth it!

Alex is awesome!!! She is very down to earth and expresses a mothering presence in the course. I would def. take another class with her.

This was by far the hardest, most time consuming course I have taken for my Masters. When I signed up for it, I was extremely excited because I wanted to know about teaching online. In comparison to many other elective grad classes, I found the work load to be quite a bit. Developing an online course takes a large amount of time (as you know!) – Maybe in the future cutting down on the number of discussion posts (maybe 4?) or blog posts (1 per module) might help students find more time to work on their courses, which to me was the most important/exciting/gratifying aspect of the class.

You have been the most influential teacher I have had online yet. You have also taught me how to improve my teaching and teacher presence through the modeling you do in this course. Thanks for investing so much time in me and my fellow student’s learning!

This was the most challenging course in my Master Degree career at UAlbany. I loved every minute of it. I think that pushing students to perform at higher levels helps them to break the plateu of what they think they are capable of. Usually they are capable of more than you think. It also helped my learning to use diigo and rate my posts. At first I thought it was painstaking and hard, especially when I spent an hour on constructing a post only to recieve a 2, but as I learned that it was more about teaching others, I began to perform better and was more motivated to teach something new and provide a cool resouce in diigo

My feelings about this course are great! I would recommend anyone interested in online course development to take the course with Alex. She makes everyone in the course feel welcome and comfortable, which is the key to being successful and having students who are motivated to working with her.

Relationships and feelings are one of the underlying keys to success in a course. If you have a teacher you like, don’t you want to work harder to please them? I know I do…and I know that I don’t really feel like working for someone who berates my feelings and is insensitive.

Overall, this has been the most challenging course that I have encountered in my educational career and that is saying something since my background includes some biological and chemical science courses that most people dread the mere thought of taking. However, I feel I have learned more in this course that I can apply to my own life and profession than those afore mentioned courses. The principles presented and utilized in my online course design made me revaluate my FTF courses and how I will teach them in the future, too.

Another major impression is the degree to which Alexandra is adept at infusing “teaching presence” in to the online learning experience. She, along with Peter Shea et al. (2005) designed a study that looked the effects of teaching presence, using as research subjects 2,036 students participating in the SUNY Learning Network (SLN). Pickett, Shea, and colleagues, examined the “connection between students’ sense of learning community as measured by Rovai’s Classroom Community Scale and teaching presence as measured by indicators that reflect components in the Community of Inquiry Model as described by Garrison, Anderson, and their colleagues” (p 70). The researchers reported a correlation between teacher presence and a well-developed sense of community, which is key in the constructivist paradigm. Especially important is the instructor’s participation in “directed facilitation”, which may play a significant role in the creation of community, and may “include whether the students feel the instructor is drawing in participants, creating an accepting climate for learning, keeping students on track, and diagnosing misperceptions” (p.71). I think it is fair to say, based on her very high level of robust participation, that Alexandra is adept at producing directed facilitation.

In this course, I think you are demonstrating teaching presence mostly through the discussions within each module. Not to be little feedback provided to us through our written assignments, much of the teaching presence that I sense from you is in the discussion areas; likewise, from student teaching presence. I made a related comment to how much students are contributing to my learning in this course within my blog. I think that the class community is sort of being created in the blogs but also has pieces of it spread out in the discussions. Reading through each discussion post, whether it applies to me directly or not, creates a sense that other students are experiencing similar things as I am within the course. The icebreaker activity in this course was unique. The use of a conversational tone provides a personal sense to all posts. In this module, the use of Diigo to work individually and within the entire group to share references and to comment on the shared references is another way that a sense of community is being created.

I still remember how I felt that first time I accessed this course through blackboard and clicked on the link that said click here first. A video from Youtube came up and there was Alex saying hello and introducing herself and the course in video format. This was only the second time I had a professor in my online learning career that made a video appearance to welcome me and my classmates to the class. One striking aspect of her video was that it wasn’t edited or scripted. It was just her talking to us all in one take… how much more “real” that it get? This first glimpse into the course immediately got me thinking that my instructor was going to be knowledgeable and techno-savvy and would be able to help me learn a great deal. I also had a chance to hear her voice in real time and see what she looked like. I have taken online classes before in which the instructor NEVER gave us a description of herself, and many don’t provide pictures. I like to see who I am working with and know a little bit about them, don’t you?

I think another way Alex has created a welcoming online environment is in how she utilizes the 7 principles for effective online teaching. She maintains very frequent contact, encourages cooperation among each of us, provides us with learning activities that get us actively involved in our own learning, she gives prompt feedback, emphasizes time on task, maintains VERY high expectations (which pushes us to reach beyond our normal threshold for learning), and presents a lot of the information in a variety of ways which appeal to various learning styles.

You have brought a fresh perspective to my learning and it has shaped me into a better student, and hopefully a better teacher as well. In facilitating discourse, you have done an excellent job taking our comments and observations to another level. I’ve enjoyed how you have been able to encourage us to add to our points by asking us additional questions. You have also provided us with opportunities to rate ourselves and each other, further enabling us to push ourselves to new levels. One of the things in teaching presence that I have found most effective has been your ability to “Draw in participants, prompting discussion/interaction.” (Pickett 2008) I enjoy looking at the emails I get each day to see if there are points I may want to followup on later. By having Moodle auto-send us updates, it keeps the course in our mind and enables us to stay connected even when not connected. In terms of developing class community, you have been most effective at “Create activities where students must rely on each other.” (Pickett 2008). I have received so much feedback and new perspective from my peers through the use of diigo, student responses, and by observing others coursework.

I think from day one, Alex made it a goal to establish teaching presence and class community within this course. Starting with teaching presence, there are three main components that are each addressed: facilitating discourse, direct instruction, and instructional design and organization (Pickett 2008). Starting with the course information documents which showed us basically the guidelines for the course, the module break down complete with time frames, and the rubrics which would be used to evaluate us, we were able to experience teaching presence. Continuing, Alex set up specific questions for our discussions and presented content through readings and presentations – this is all apart of teaching presence. It is important though to realize that students play a large role in teaching presence as well and this is clearly evident in our course. Through our discussions, in which we are encouraged to respond and challenge our classmates’ thinking, through our blog posts, through our interaction with Alex whether it be about our personal courses, our ideas presented in discussions, or the content of our blogs, we are absolutely illustrating teaching presence.

When it comes to class community, also from day one, this was started and continues to grow with each module. We started with the Getting to Know You Activities, which included creating the Voice Thread welcome, the course profile, putting our pictures and even for some of us, our voices online. All of this helped establish who exactly this class is and for me, helps make it more comfortable to interact within the class. We continue to build community by responding to classmates blogs and sharing our own experiences, but I think one of the most important ways is through our discussions. In each module, we must interact with our classmates – whether it is sharing our reflections, our experiences, new knowledge, or just giving positive feedback, we are constantly interacting and building trust in each other. This is what class community is really about.

I am hard, hot and nurturing! Hell yes i teach like a girl.

I was surprised at how polite everyone was in the course… maybe that was not it, maybe it was more that there was a formality to the interactions that i did not anticipate.

I think the concern about grades/failing/etc. also surprised me.

I was VERY surprised a student’s trying to interact in the course using a cell phone. I did not anticipate or expect that at all. Really interesting implication. Not sure what to do about that yet : )

I was surprised that most students seemed to prefer communicating with me privately via coursemail with stuff that needn’t have been private… i need to manage that better by directing students to the appropriate areas of the course. I wonder why… perhaps it was just easier than scrolling down to find the question areas or the talk with me area…?

I was surprised that no one really used the Bulletin Board or any of the class community areas really. No one found the hidden picture : ) i wonder if that is cuz the area is way at the end of the topics physically.

I was very very very happy with the blogging activity. I loved reading the student posts!

I loved using jing in the course.

I learned a lot using diigo for the shared references in the course. I need to shore that up some now in the course. I want all links that are used anywhere in the course or the blogs or anywhere to be posted and tagged in diigo. Also, i need to set up some standard tagging conventions and have some instruction on how to tag effectively for students, especially thinking about the resource moving forward with the student beyond the end of the term. The diigo link roll embedded right into a moodle block rocks!!!

Twitter and voicethreads worked great.

I found grading very tedious for technical reasons. I had to do everything manually. Tally up all the discussion grades… etc.

Using moodle for course management was extremely challenging. There are limited course management tools, or i just don’t know how to use moodle, so following and keeping up with things during the course delivery was very difficult. I also need to look at the design of my activities, the amount of work required and my own levels of participation in the course.

Not having a HD for tech support was also very challenging. Not having a MID to review my course and to give me feedback on optimizing the features and functionality of Moodle was also frustrating… or i missed having that a lot.

In spite of all the work, i loved every minute of developing and delivering this course. It has been awesome. And i had wonderful awesome students that I can’t thank enough for sharing this first online teaching experiences with me. : )

http://www.tweetclouds.com/user_pages/alexpickett.html  – created based on my tweets using tweetclouds.com.