Wrapping Up and Moving On

First, let's wrap up module two. You all did a great job responding to each other and providing feedback. Tracy, Liz, and I appreciate the veteran instructors stepping up and sharing their experiences and the less seasoned instructor's willingness to put questions and concerns on the discussion boards.

Last week, your discussion was focused on Transformative Learning. How can your online course transform students? What can you do to facilitate the transformation? There were so many good ideas like using multimedia tools,incorporating service learning, case studies, role playing, self reflection, and more. To help capture your comments, we created a Wordle that displays common words you used in your posts. Check it out! 

This week we turn our attention to Universal Design for Learning and Accessibility. You will learn a lot in the module, so I won't spoil it here. This is a very important module though and your activities for this module will be a little more challenging than last week's from a technical standpoint. But don't worry! Pay particular attention to the resources listed on the Application Activity Summary (4.1 in the Table of Contents). You will find tutorials and step-by-step guides to walk your through. You will be adding all of these activities to the Practice Module in your course development shell.  

This week also gives you a bit of a breather on focusing on your course design. If you need to spend a little more time planning out your module and creating learning objectives, now is a good time. If you finish with this week's activities, jump in and start writing some lessons or experimenting with some cool tools. Just to get you started, here are a few of my favorites:

 

An Online Scrapbook/Visual Book Tool

http://www.mixbook.com/edu

An Online Magazine Creator

http://www.issuu.com/

Tool that Allows Interactive Voice, Video, Phone Call, or Text Responses to Instructor-Posted Media http://voicethread.com/

A Great Wiki Tool

http://pbworks.com/content/edu+overview

An Online Blog/Poster Tool

https://posterous.com/

Using the Internet for a Web Quest

http://webquest.org/index.php

An Online Poster Tool

http://edu.glogster.com/

Tracy, Liz, and I will be contacting you soon to set up individual meeting times. As always, don't spend too much time in frustration as you work on your course. A quick redirect to an online resource or letting you know what button to click can often save you hours of frustration. So let us know if you need help and keep up the good work!

Andrea