Thursday, December 15, 2011

EC&I Review

Instead of creating two separate blogs about the classes I watched, I decided to combine the two entries into one blog for easier reading... enjoy!

Class One


In order to make up a few of our classes I participated/read/watched (not sure what you would call it since it’s so many different things) in the first class of the EC&I class that they held. While watching this class it was clear to see a lot of the similarities. They are expected to participate in activities like us (their class also has a twitter hashtag).  I think on of the biggest differences was the way in which they come to class, virtually. I still find the way they use the Internet fascinating. I’ve participated in online classes before but never like this. They are able to listen, talk, view slides and even raise their hands (this part is still mind-blowing to me). I learned that this is an MOOC or Massive Open Online Course, and is the new type of pedagogy that many classes are developing. Very fitting for the concept of technology and learning! I think on of the coolest things is being able to go back and view the whole class again, even who was participating in the class. This class was a basic intro into their semester and what they would be doing. They actually learned a lot of the same tools we did, twitter, diigo, and Google docs. They also have a collaborative Google doc in which they post notes about each class and even links to the different highlights/tools for each session. I think this class is very interesting because it’s based on the idea of technology and I like how they are learning by doing, in the sense that their class literally went virtual. I would love to see the student’s reviews about the class and how they felt they learned and how they felt about a digital classroom.

Class Two

I decided that I would go in chronological order for the classes on EC&1, so the next class I watched was class #2. This class was interesting too in the sense that it was very similar to that of class one. I guess that would be expected at the beginning of a semester when you are just getting started. This class was different in the fact that there are students who are taking it for credit and others who aren’t. I guess this shows how our times are changing and how we can find learning in fields that we enjoy (it actually made me think of the class I had watched earlier on, kind of foreshadowing). This class had the basics, intro of the students, overview of the basic tools and expectations. I thought the part about blogging was very interesting. I feel that it went into the different aspects of blogging and gave views that may normally be looked over. It’s interesting because they talk about using a lot of Google tools but this class was about using wordpress, another blogging site. After the lecture I decided to look at this website and it looks interesting from the front home page (it was snowing on the homepage, it was cool). It looks very similar to that of blogger but maybe a little more style. May be something to look at if you hadn’t and are enjoying blogging! Besides these tools, they discussed twitter and tweet deck. They also talked about delicious as a tool for social bookmarking, similar to Diigo. A lot of this class was also focused on the idea of social networking and the importance. I think it was kind of to get everyone into the mindset of participating and it showed a lot of how social networking is changing the world and the way we do things. I felt like this class was very similar to ours and they obviously use a lot of the same tools. 


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