Teaching: E-Teaching Seminar #3

The third Seminar went very well, I think. As is nearly always the case, hands-on learning is the best! I thanked two of my colleagues for becoming followers of the blog, and gave some slightly belated Mardi Gras beads to our saxophone playing leader, Kis-Tóth Lajos. Well, they were still in time for Farsang!

In Seminar #2 I described a number of strategies I use in the ITED 8100 class to advance the principles of Identity and Community. In Seminar #3, I invited my professional colleagues to see how these strategies are applied within the WebCT course. We went on a hands-on tour, guided by a screen shot illustrated PowerPoint with notes that I had distributed through email attachment, Slideshare.com, and the Eszterházy Károly E-Learning Moodle site in the days leading up to Seminar #3. I'm planning to learn more about Moodle and begin to work in activities there for the future Seminars. That's really the best way to promote the strategies I describe--by seeing and showing how they can be implemented in the instructional context that exists here.

We are still going to talk about the Principles of online teaching discussed in the first two seminars, based on the results of the survey in Week 2. That's on the agenda for next week. But we're also going to continue the engaging technology use, and this week explore the synchronous world of Wimba Live Classroom. It's interesting that on the evening of Seminar #3 my colleague Andy Brovey presented a Georgia Board of Regents professional development seminar using Live Classroom. I had the link for the Wimba event, held at 3:00 PM Georgia time, and logged on here in Hungary at 9:00 PM to find several Valdosta State colleagues as well as Komlö Csaba, one of my Seminar friends from here in Eger. I'll be interested in discussing his impressions of the session.

Following the seminar, as is the wonderful custom, as many of the group who can, go to a brainstorming session. We discuss e-learning, systems of education, how our classes are going, language, current events, travel, and, occasionally oddities such as the differences between what we call a meat-producing animal when it is walking around, and when it is on your plate. These informal discussions, as well as the food, beer, and wine that go with them, are important to the formation of our "learning about e-learning" community. This week was special because it was a holiday--one that we'd never heard of. It was Gluttonous Thursday, a day when many restaurants in Hungary offer 50% off. This only happens once a year, on the last Thursday of February, so we were happy to have already promised to pick up the tab! I don't think anyone was particularly gluttonous...but we did have a nice time.