CEdO550 Week 1

Identify 2 Asynchonous and 2 Synchonous online learning tools: Voicethread (Asychonous) is a multimedia web 2.0 tools that allows anyone to comment on individual slides within the presentation. Google Docs (Asynchonous) allows anyone with editing rights to the document to put on highlighted comments. Facebook and Twitter (both Synchonous) are real-time, social networking sites. Four types of activities for online learners: Moodle (start a discussion thread asking each student to respond with their opinion on the topic). Wikispaces (each student create a page on the class wiki the introduces themselves to the class). Twitter (during class, I enter a tweet and ask each student to respond to it immediately as part of the classroom discussion). Wallwisher (during class, ask students to go to Wallwisher and enter their responses immediately as part of classroom discussion). Initial contact warm and inviting? Things I liked about it and could improve on: I thought my initial contact letter was inviting. I started it by congratulating them for being selected to participate in the class, so hopefully that helps them feel that their participation in the class is highly valuable. One thing I will change that was brought to my attention by another classmate was that some of my bullet points seemed to be out of order. I will definitely review it before submitting the final copy because it is imperative that directions for online courses be exactly correct. Initial contact clear and concise? Strategies to make it concise: As stated above, it was brought to my attention that some of the information on the contact letter may appear out of order and may be confusing to my students. I will be correcting before submitting the final copy. One strategy that would guarantee that my directions are in accurate order would be for me to go through the directions step-by-step myself as if I am the student taking the class and verify that I am able to do whatever the task is that I'm asking my students to do.