One of the recurring themes in Distance Education is why do we feel distant. One of the theoretical foundations of that perception is Moore’s Theory of Distance Transaction, but until we get to that in the course, consider this article that I wrote last year:
There is a method in the madness of this course. The problem is that, before you can incorporate any of this stuff into your practice, you have to first master it sufficiently to be to see how you might use it. I think of teaching as an art form. As in any art form, an artist has to experience a variety of media and methods, picking and choosing among them, and combining them in ways that result in a unique voice. This class is art school. You’re going to be exposed to — and asked to produce in — a variety of media, using a variety of methods, all of them relating to two underlying themes.
A. Technology is neither the problem nor the solution.
B. Education is not the obverse of Learning.
As part of today’s reading, please review Why a Feed Reader? and start cruising through your ‘gators for interesting things to post on. OLDaily is an enormous resource and Remote Access is going through his “pre-launch” classroom technology review.
Good progress for one day.
Welcome to Day Two. Some of you are still struggling to make sense of it. Please read Eating the Elephant for a little background on what the various tools are for.
For those new to the world of RSS aggregation, I find this video is very helpful:
My traditional greeting for the class has been via email. With the advent of blogging other simple tools, I’m able to create an archive of materials that I can use and re-use pretty much on demand and at any point in any course. See it at the following address:
