Week 7 Reflection

Chap 29

When reading this chapter one of the arguments that the authors made and I found very important was on page 285: "Rather than making assumptions about all online learners, we should be selecting technics to create rich, flexible environments that reflect elemental outcomes, support synthetic outcomes, and provide connections to the world outside the e-learning environment".

I think the sucess or the failure of an online depends on the capacity of the instructor to create a class environment where each and everyone will participate. As full time graduate and international student at WMU , I had to take both traditional and online classes. Some online classes were very enriching and helful and others boring. I think why I did not really enjoy some of them was because of the lack of interaction among students. Indeed, some instructors based on their own assumptions believe that each student can to do alone his work and his assigments without any communication and discussion with the rest of the class. This kind of teaching philosophy that some teachers have, can impact in avery negative manner the learners. I personally believe that a class whether online or traditional needs to create a space for discussion where students can learn from one and other. When such conditions are inexistent, it becomes very difficult to get the best outcome from a course of study.

The second argument which seems to me very important was in page 287: "Just as it is important for instructional designers to receive a good basic education in the field, it is critical for them to continue the education" This passage clearly point it out that instructional designers need to update their knowledge. They always need to be aware about the new changes in teh fied. Since technology is always chaning instructional designers needs to always look for the best solutions for the organization tehy work for. The needs of education organizations in the technology have never been so important as they are today. Therefore, understanding those needs in order to come up with the best solutions should be the main goal of all instructional designers. In addition, since most designers work with different actors who are not experts in technology it is very important to know about the field of expertise of the people you are trying to help. Developing good communication skills can be a very helful tool for most instructional designers.

Chap 31

I really enjoyed and learned from all the tools we have used during this semester.

I particuary liked the screencast activity because it showed us how to share an audio/ video format to explain a new technology tool to our student. Creating your own video was something that I found interesting an helpful not only for this class but also for my activities with my students. Each student can use this method to share with his classmates new concpts.

Creating a website even a basic one was a very interesting for me. I always wanted to create my own website but was afraid to start because of what most of my friends told me .But this week activity showed me that anyone can create a website. You just need to have some basic knowledge and you are ready to go. Hopefully , I willbe able to a create a website for mu students where we will share all our class activities. Any information the students and their parents would like to have will be there.

My last favorite activity was creating the wikis. I found that wikis are one of the most poweful way to communicate and to share information with others. Anyone can have take advantage of this tool without any specific training.