Hi Meg.

I always struggle to keep up with these courses too. I try to go too deeply into things and get side tracked. This course really doesn’t require a high level of activity though. Try to make the weekly webinar (it’s a bit late for you though, I know) and do one or two activities. If you have a personal blog that’s a good place to…[Read more]

I’ve been experimenting with Twitter, which I follow on my phone, but it is a little too ephemeral for me, too fast moving and disjointed. I do not see much real interaction happening there. I do see it as a good way to distribute things quickly to people you know are folloing it. You can write a blog post and send it to twitter using the #octel…[Read more]

I tried using Moodle Workshop but found it very difficult to manage and I did not understand how it was marking students work. Another problem was students missing deadlines – they ALL need to finish one phase before moving on to the next, which meant that we slowly lost participants as the assignment progressed and there was not much that could…[Read more]

Google Docs gives students reasonable control over who can see what. If you’re working in K-12 you have special constraints. Have you looked at Edmodo. That is designed specially with these restrictions in mind.

Hi Damon,

I’ve found the same thing using Moodle and GoogleDrive. Other teachers at my institution had been using GoogleDrive for several years before I started. I stayed in Moodle for a long time and only discovered GoogleDrive once I started a collaborative writing program. My institution does not use GoogleDocs so students need to create their…[Read more]

Hi Alicia,

Thanks a lot. This is very useful to me, especially the Michigan resources. I’m sure teachers will be interested in Scribble. We are also using BB Collaborate and this is one of the tools instructors were interested in using for synchronous sessions.

One of the problems I struggle with, personally, is curriculum for language courses.…[Read more]

Welcome Juilie! Nice to see you here.

Hey Guy,

I’m interested in the distinction between open resources and open curricula. What kind of outcomes do you think could be linked to an open curriculum? I’m a language teacher so our outcomes can be quite wobbly at times. While some colleagues insist on drawing lines in the sand – they are also the ones that complain most about students.

Hi Alicia. Can you tell us something about how you are using tech in your language classes? Are these online or on ground? I’m on a design team working on online courses aimed at three lesser taught languages: Chinese, Japanese and Arabic. I’d love to hear about what you’re doing.

I use FB with a couple of closed groups but don’t like it very much. It’s a handy platform if you know who you’re dealing with, but it’s a little over exposed. I’m new to G+ and exploring that now on this MOOC. Twitter is still a mystery to me.

I’ve participated on a few unstructured MOOCs and I think I’m starting to understand them better now. I enjoyed the OLDS Mooc last year (Open University). That was all over the place but also quite goal driven. I felt a lot of pressure to keep up. Rhizo14 this year was completely the opposite. Also unstructured but no pressure at all. It wandered…[Read more]