It takes one snowing Virginian day to keep me in and let it out. Only that the snow melted too soon and I had to go to work anyways. But here it is, my first Blog ever.
For a long while I thought that learning only happened when the information to be studied came from the lecture of a teacher to the eager student in the front row of a classroom. But it is not happening like that anymore. Online learning means a lot of reading, researching, checking, comparing, applying, doing—Constructivism, I guess. No verbal discussion other than online, no funny remark by a smartass student… It is a lot of rummaging on Cyber Space.
Surprisingly, though, this semester it hasn’t totally happened like that either: I also get a little lecture and some first-hand samples face2face with a teacher. At my new job, sitting next to me, conspicuously in her smart appearance sits the Queen of Blogs. Amy, the writer, producer, and creator of Crazy Mokes (http://www.crazymokes.com/), is the proud subscriber to over a 100 blogs, which she receives via RSS. While in my head I am thinking a thousand things and using Wikipedia or Google to keep up with my own internal questionings. She receives everything she ever wanted to know, anything she ever wanted to read, through her RSS reader, like bloglines.com.
As my questionings, now directed to her increases, she kindly gives me the tour.
Why! Look at it as your own personal journal you don’t mind your younger brother to read, or your personal newsletter to the world or family members overseas, or your letter to the editor to an imagining self-owned newspaper (…or writing assignment to EDUC266). It is just a website with a software (she uses WordPress from: http://wordpress.org/) that makes it easy to, well, make a Blog, which incidentally comes from Web and Log coined together (well, I knew that one from Wikipedia) and because blogs are expression of ones personal style, she chose her own style and produces her own banners, sometimes photos taken by her, other times…. like this month featuring Mrs. Pacma. Amy says, “I'm currently addicted to playing Ms. Pacman, and so I thought it would be fun to have a ms. Pacman themed banner for February, with little hearts for the dots.”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Yes, learning/teaching has changed...not just b/c of online learning though - but also b/c of developments/research in how people learn. I encourage you all to read How People Learn!
Congratulations on your first blog entry ever! I'm glad you have an expert blogger sitting next to you at work just in case you need her. Once we get in to the semester a little more I think we'll all see the benefits of reflective blogging. I know I'll run into some issues that no doubt I'll feel compelled to blog about! :-)
Post a Comment