CEdO599 - The Final Chapter

When you have completed 95 percent of your journey, you are only halfway there.  Japanese Proverb

As part of our final blog assignment, we had to go back and read our previous blog entries, starting with the beginning of the course.  I have to say that this program did meet most of my expectations.  I started with a good understanding of technology, but wanted to learn more about how to apply it to teaching situations.  The program did introduce me to a few new technological ideas, but for the most part I already had some knowledge about the different programs that we used throughout the course.  However I was happy with how many examples we came up with for how to apply these technologies to learning situations.  I learned a great deal about how to use technology in the delivery of training materials.  Online learning has several benefits and some key challenges that are not present in traditional instruction.  I have tried to distill some of my key learning points from each of the classes on my site.  Here are some of them:


Key Takeaway: A good introduction is key in an online class to make sure all students are comfortable with the technology. Not doing so could prevent them from succeeding, even if they understand the material.


Key Takeaway: Different students will have different experiences with technology. Allowing them to explore the technology will level the playing field and help students who might be intimidated by technology.

Key Takeaway: The world of technology is constantly changing. The tool that you use one year may be gone the next. Always evaluate the hardware and software you are using against the requirements of the class, and be ready to move to a technology when available.

Key Takeaway: Review the online resources that you provide your students, and make sure they are critical consumers of information they find on the Internet. Always consider the source.

Key Takeaway: Make the lessons applicable to the real world problems of the students whenever possible. Tap into their creativity, and let them provide you with the answers.

Key Takeaway: Use the visual and auditory elements of the web to enhance your instruction. Videos, images, and sounds can all make a dry topic come to life for your class.

Key Takeaway: Allow the class to create many of the artifacts for the class using Web 2.0 tools. The class will be richer if you harness the power of many.

Key Takeaway: Analyzing data can reveal trends that might not otherwise be visible.

Key Takeaway: Online learning can be enhanced by active facilitation by the instructor and frequent student/teacher contact.

Key Takeaway: Collecting and summarizing knowledge can help reveal additional lessons.

Key Takeaway: Teachers must lead their organizations through change in order to introduce new learning technologies. They need to understand strategies for communicating and convincing people to change.

Key Takeaway: By combining the lessons from many of the classes, you can create plans for great change.

By taking all of these lessons, I will be able to expand and improve my e-learning teaching, and produce a better quality experience for my students.  That is really what I was looking for in the program.

CEdO599 The Project Continues

I have spent a great deal of time interviewing my stakeholders, and I have found a great social networking site that will work well for my pilot.  I evaluated three different services, and created social networking sites on each of them.  Edmodo was very easy to use, but because it is tailored to K-12 education it did not best suit the needs of our company training.  Privacy and security were two of the biggest concerns that I uncovered in my interviews.  I also evaluated Yammer.  This was very close to our requirements but still not quite right.  The best fit was Socialcast by VMWare.  This service lets you set up a private social network.  It has more administration features than Yammer.  Best of all it is free for groups of less than 50.  After that it is $5 per user per month.

Once I had selected the service I created a sample site for our company.  I used this to begin creation of the initial training documentation for the users.  I made sure to walk them through the sign in process, the creation of their first  posts.  I included lessons on posting links and uploading documents.  Finally I created a lesson on how to search for the content on the site.  This is the most critical part of the process, as it is how people will find the content that others post.

The last part of my project was to show the site to others and have them post content.  Due to some re-organizations at work this has been one of the harder parts of the project.  However I did share the site with the head of our HR training organization and asked her to post her thoughts.  She thought is was a good idea and was looking forward to seeing more.  The project will shift into high gear, so this proof of concept will really some into play at that time.