Lots of folks responded right away last week to the photo and meeting e-mails - whoot! I have begun to draft a “photo document’ to send out to participants in the first few days of class. I’ll also post it to the Intro discussion board (and use it in the online meeting). I wish out software tool - The Learning Manager - had a way for photos to appear with each discussion board post, but oh, well.
Sandra and I have come up with a plan for the online meeting - that ties the photos in! We plan to have a document with each person’s photos and space beside it for their stregths and weaknesses regarding the course topic (ESOL instruciton or Support ing students with LD). We’ll share the doc via the meeting tool, and Sandra will facilitate discussion while I type up folks responses on it. We’ll ask folks to share their strentgths and concerns/issues and then ask others to join in - are these their strengths as well? Do they have these issues/concerns? Hopefully this will start a conversation and help them get to know one another!
Surprisingly MANY folks do not have headsets with microphones. I thought the ESOL folks especially would have access as it is a common need in order to use most ESOL instructional software. With Sandra’s course being so big - it looks like we’ll have 2 meetings - hopefully roughly dividing the class in half. For my LD folks, MAN I can’t seem to get them together on a time AT ALL. Worse, I’ve had over five withdraw - mostly becasue they are no longer employed in Adult Education. We’ll start with over the minimum, but I’m not sure how well the LD group will work as a research population…
About half of the folks have gotten us photos, and all have been digital. I mis-estimated the time it would take to collect phots and meeting time info and headset info and to mail out headsets, etc. I’m also running short on time to Check everyone on the Saba/Centra [UT LiveOnline] tool. Some folks are getting the online course ‘Tech check” mixed up with the LiveOnline Technical check as well. Wow - ZOO-y!