My thoughts on social media

I was surprised and honoured this week when John Larkin invited me to be one of his virtual guests on Friday Follow Twitter Interview. His questions about the role of social media in education and my personal life helped me organize my thoughts that have been floating in my head for a while. So here is the virtual interview and how I feel about social media. Thank you John for the opportunity to join the great community of educators in your network and share my thoughts.

Trying new iPad browser

Came across the iCab Mobile browser today and decided to give it a go as still have not found a blogging friendly browser.
So far so good :-)

Testing Blogsy

Just came across Blogsy http://blogsyapp.com/ and decided to give it a go. looks very simple and intuitive to use. It integrates with my Flickr, Picasa, YouTube and blogger account and has for easy access a web browser in the apps panel.

Afterthoughts on significant learning experiences

I was talking to a fellow educator today about student engagement in an online learning environment and referred to Dee Fink's book I finished reading a couple of weeks ago "Creating Significant Learning Experiences". As we both shared some of the significant learning that we have experienced I realized that not many educators have experienced significant learning in an online learning environment or even formal educational setting. I personally can think of one or two during completing my masters online. But what about the educators that have not experienced online learning as learners or they have but they have not been lucky to have a significant learning experience as I did. The questions that lingered in my mind after that conversation and motivated this post are:

- Is it fair to ask of educators to design significant learning experiences for their students online if they have not experienced such learning themselves?
- Can they just 'transfer' expertise and significant learning experiences they have designed for the classroom to the virtual online learning environment?

Will be interesting to hear what others think.

Creating Significant Learning Experiences

Currently reading "Creating Significant Learning Experiences" by Dee Fink. A great book suggesting an integrated approach to course design and providing valuable advice on what higher education organizations can do to more effectively support better teaching. In his book Dee poses a fundamental question to all teachers: "How can I create courses that will provide significant learning experiences for my students?". To be able to answer that question as educators first we need to define what significant learning experiences are and then find ways to create courses that will result in such experiences.

A significant learning experience in my view is one that engages and inspires learners to learn and continue learning even after the class/ course is over and results in significant and lasting change or transformation in their lives.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Testing Flock the social web browser

Got my Flock browser today and trying to figure out how to flock and post to my blog from the flock open blog editor.

So far not a bad experience but it looks like it will take a bit getting use to as any other new tool. If I manage to stick with it for a while I may be able to master it.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Critical Reflection on New Literacies

Here is a long coming critical reflection on the last course I completed exploring New Literacies and Multimodal Texts.