End of Week 1

I am here at the computer exhausted from attending a midnight release event for Halo Reach, a video game my teenage son is extremely excited about!

We made it through our first week of ADTED 531--lots of setting things up. I appreciated what Will posted on the course web site:

The course is not primarily about technology, but about the ways in which educational and training systems can apply technology to offer better quality programs, to a wider constituency at lower costs.

In a course about distance education delivered at a distance, the teaching and learning processes employed are themselves valuable resources for understanding the teaching-learning and administrative issues.

This emphasis on applying technology to adult education is what I am looking forward to. I have a good amount of experience teaching adults through DE. Most of my past experience has involved a course web site (through systems like Angel and Blackboard) where I post materials, student submit assignments, and where my students participate in class discussion just as we do.

Despite this experience, I have never used any of the technologies we have started setting up this week. Even at this early juncture I can see how some of these could be useful. I could see adding a blog or having students use them. I absolutely love the Google docs function (I have used it for work but never a course) and of course can understand the value of adding video and audio through podcasts to a course package (wherever it is housed). And since sometimes I have groups working on projects together, I can see the value of Skype for group interaction at a distance. The one thing so far that I am really not sure about is the use of Second Life. I am reserving judgement on that one!

Overall, the first week was a good introduction, and now I am looking forward to delving more into the substance.

How about you?