ETEC 591 Online Learning Systems

Wikis are vital to the information superhighway. Most of the time, they get a bad rap because they can be edited by anyone, and therefore, are susceptible to erroneous information. However, the reality is...they were one of the founding reasons for the existence of the internet. The primary impetus for the connectivity of all our computers and servers was to share information , and so a wiki is an ideal way of compressing that information into one place. Obviously, Wikipedia  (which is basically an online encyclopedia) is one of the most obvious examples of our collective knowledge. While Wikipedia contains information about essentially everything under the sun, they are other versions of wikis that are much smaller in scope, tending to focus on just one specific subject, such as knitting, bird watching, or, for our purposes, education. PBWorks is one such wiki-themed website which teachers can use to organize their learning environment. They can work collaboratively with other teac

What I decided to do with Week Three's experiment, is that I would evaluate a new program, Khan Academy , and then compare it with the other applications I have used in the prior weeks. (Those two others being Google Classroom and Edmodo.) I can see why Khan Academy was chosen for the "flipped classroom" experiment. This website has one of the most expansive lists of tutorials I have ever seen. The only other two websites I can think of that would rival it in volume might be Lynda.com , or YouTube. The primary subjects that Khan Academy excels at are math, science, computing, history, and economics. In addition, though, it also has several videos on test preparation, and materials on college enrollment, job searching, and personal finance. One of the great features about Khan Academy is that the format is extremely interactive. For instance, you might watch one video, and then subsequently work on an exercise, followed by another video, etc. All of this leading to a fin

This week's Design Experiment is about furthering our knowledge of Course Management Systems. I'll be answering several important questions, such as: What are they? What purpose do they serve? How do students and teachers connect with one another? and What are some interesting features/comparisons of the different models out there? I will start by explaining what a CMS, or Course Management System is. Sometimes referred to as a Learning Management System , a CMS is a software application that enables students to log in and participate in classes or courses online, essentially giving them the ability to interact with other students and the instructor as they would in a physical environment. With most CMS's, the student can learn the modules, participate in class discussions, view lectures, turn in assignments, take exams, and a variety of other class activities. In the many classes that I have taken online, I have experienced 3 or 4 different Course Management Systems. How

For the first week in ETEC 591 Online Learning Systems, we will be reviewing Google Classroom , and several of Google's Apps that are available for anyone who has created their own Google account. The aim of this is for us to get our "feet wet" while using online technologies. The goals are to: try out several features of the technology, examine how they might be used in an online learning environment, and then determine what kinds of content would be ideal for that particular technology. Google Classroom The Classroom environment that Google has created has a lot of features that could assist an instructor in teaching remotely, or aid a face-to-face teacher by providing additional ways to connect to their students. Since I am not associated, or work with, an ISD at the moment, I simply created a dummy account to see what the interface looks like: This gave me the opportunity to play around with most of the features that it has going for it. As the instruct