TLt Conference 2009 – Monday course online LIVEBLOG

10:46 Steve Wihak gives intro.
Pandemonium or Panacea? using technology to teach history
Dr. Ken Leyton-Brown on moving his history course to online delivery.

Disney’s apprentice image in mind. Does an apprentice know what to do? Trial and error – “grim phrase”. Learn to swim by drowning? “Trial and success” not in lexicon.

Can teach what you know? Not innately. “The sage on the stage” – someone said.

If there’s no learning, there’s no teaching going on.
Teacher can’t understand why students not engrossed in subject.
(I’m confounded that people are disinterested in politics.)

WebCT initially tried. Then pottery, and digital maps added to program.
Podcasts made available, and students taking notes from podcasts did better than those who attended!

10:59 Harvard stopped offering paper handbooks, and calendars.
There are issues. Cost, training, and theoretical problems with usefulness.

WebCT was a good introduction, and wasn’t different from what he was doing before – notes distribution. Some didn’t use it at all. “I hate WebCT, I hate computers.”
Pottery tool is “neat” grade A. Want speed and results. Digital maps may not help everyone learn better. Gave a quiz… some thought water was the land! “Parts blue, that would be water, green would be land.”

11:08 Search hits on Google are not “research”.
Problems:
Wrong acceptance letters sent from American university.
(I got mentioned,) CD distributed with photos too large to open. (I helped identify this problem for Ken a few weeks ago.

I recall 2 years ago Randy McLeod talking about having to use texting to communicate with his distance students. When I took his satellite course in late 1990s, it was telephone and fax.

Tweet me I’m Irish.
students in trouble around world for online remarks and behaviour.
People are passionately attached to their technologies. Books on maintaining digital relationships, or “defriending”.Woman stabbed due to facebook status change! (Pres. Timmons made joke other hour about confusing facebook friends when she changed her “relationship” status to hidden to respect her husband’s privacy wishes. Facebook said she was single, and a niece was traumatized.