PPEL - Unit 2: Task 3, 2nd LO

Regarding this 2nd LO, I decided to comment Maria João Spilker’s work…

http://www.mindomo.com/view.htm?m=6bee60bc4f9d45ee88d07b65a23e0941

This work is about Online Teaching and Learning, based on Paulsen, M. F., 2003, Part One: Online Education Teaching and Learning in http://www.studymentor.com/



Her work deals with Online Teaching and Learning and she presents a well structured Mind Map, or a scheme if you prefer, on this topic and also five YouTube video presentations to help giving a more complete scenario in terms of presented topics. The scheme is excellent and gives an overall perspective on the areas related to online teaching and learning, e teachers, e teacher’s workload, e teaching techniques and e teaching opportunities. Bearing in mind the videos… (Which I will analyze as I present each one.)

1 - Teacher’s Workload, by Beth Dobler.

One of the video deals with Teacher’s Workload from a Learning Institute video on Efficient Online Teaching, by Beth Dobler. I found it very joyful, light and appealing, and its author, Beth Dobler gives an extremely stimulating approach on Teacher’s workload, giving her personal experience to illustrate it and she actually gets in touch with the audience, for we hear the reactions of the viewers. Through the presentation says that she believes “in the efficiency of online teaching” and in “the power of teaching online” and, because she also suffers the effects of teacher’s workload, she “presents time saving solutions”. She is in favor of the element of collaboration between teachers and she points out that “sharing knowledge” is the best strategy “to find what best suits for each other” in online teaching and learning environments. In my opinion this approach is excellent, very enriching and it opened my horizons regarding Beth Dobler, although the colleague has already mentioned her work, this was my first contact with her and in the future I will, definitely, accompany her work!

2 - Teaching Opportunities, published by Brunswick.

Regarding Teaching Opportunities a YouTube video is here to enlighten us on the changes that have been taking place over the last years in relation to the world, the surroundings and more precisely education. “Future is accelerating and Educations is rapidly adapting to a new reality”, where Internet emerges as an essential element providing access to new education tools, new perspectives and new ways of teaching and learning. The background music and the topics and the media way in which they are dealt grasped my attention right from the start; I found this video very clear and innovative!

3 - “Podcasting in Plain English.”, by Lee LeFever.

Bearing in mind the technique one-to-many we have “Podcasting in Plain English” and “Blogging in Plain English”, both videos are from YouTube, by Lee LeFever and they are elaborated with the use of cartoons made in paper. They are joyful, creative and easy to understand. Regarding Podcasting, at first it is established the difference between podcasting and broadcasting, then it is referred the advantages of it, and we need to have access to it and what we can gain with it, namely, according to the author, “with podcasting we don’t have to depend on traditional media”. I find this resource joyful, creative, easy to understand and ingenious and this presentation gave me excellent hints about it.

4 - “Blogging in Plain English.”, by Lee LeFever.

With the video “Blogging in Plain English” we get in touch with blogs, the messages they convey and hints on why their impact has become so big since 2003. According to the author “Blogs give ordinary people the power of the media in creating a personal kind of news that is appealing to a number of small audiences”, allowing in this way the emergence of “communities of bloggers that share, work and experience with each other” for “anyone with an idea can start a blog with the click of a button and share news minutes later”. Lee LeFever also says that “blogs are websites organized by blog posts – individual new stories – that make the news a true way street and what we do with them” is a reflection of our own perspective of everything. I found this presentation creative, stick-to-the-point and lighthearted…it is an easy way of presenting blogs and showing the significant impact they have in our lives.

5 – “Online Discussion – Teaching with Online Discussion Forums.”, by Mark Fullmer.

This presentation is regarding the technique many-to-many. This video is not new to me for the colleague Ana Marmeleira also presented it in her Annotated Bibliography. Throughout this video references are made on the possible activities regarding Web 2.0 and its implications on Online Teaching and Learning. This video is also enhancing and it is important to have something related to this, because I find Web 2.0 tools are in this type of learning and teaching (although this is not my choice of election, but I respect my colleague's decision!).

6 - “Wikis in Plain English.”, by Lee Lefever.

This presentation is also not new to me… the colleague Ana Marmeleira also made reference to it in her Annotated Bibliography and it is also on the technique many-to-many on Online Elaboration - Wikis. Like the previous presentations by Lee Lefever, I find this one also creative and joyful since its beginning; it is also done with the use of drawn cartoons and it gives significant guidelines on Wikis, how we make them and what we can do with them…it provides a good set of hints regarding this tool!

In conclusion...

Overall, I found Maria João Spilker’s choices regarding the YouTube videos very good and extremely intelligent for they provide her work a more complete and objective analysis on Online Teaching and Learning. I enjoyed this presentation and its analysis very much for I found it challenging mostly due to the amount of information presented in it! Thank you for your work!!!