Online Mediums
I was recently reading Victorias blog when her current post caught my eye. Teaching with an online medium was the topic and I was immediately intrigued. The article, ‘Lessons learned teaching online’ by George Siemens, was a summary of lessons that provided a greater insight to my recent postings.
I found that teaching online is very much like, and very much unlike, classroom teaching. The tips he provided summarised the lessons he’s learnt and shows that the critical aspects of learning brain-compatible classroom, learning styles, multiple intelligence, and emotional intelligence don’t vary from online or classroom.
Like Victoria, I too liked the tip about online lessons and that shouldn’t create the feeling of isolation from the teacher or peers, but should be used in a way that it facilitates ‘connectedness’. I felt that this was very important since many students’ usually use the computer individually.
I also liked the ‘Centering Point’ tip. He believes that a classroom is the centering point for traditional students since this is where they go to ask questions, find out where they are in relation to the course objectives, get feedback on work, or generally get clarification on virtually any subject. He then refers to the use of online mediums where he believes that a similar centering point needs to be created. A blog is a perfect example where students’ and teachers can communicate to each other.
The highest objective of education is to improve the quality of life for students and to create a better society. The goal in teaching online is to retain the best of classrooms and improve the worst. As educators this is why we should be aware of and learn from online mediums, as well as encouraging our students to do the same.
