Sloan-C & Social Media

Wow, a whole month away from posting.  Finals week kicked my butt, and then I found it hard to climb back on the wagon again.  It's a shame, because I really love having this outlet for examining my teaching practices in the light of day.


So, this will be a fairly quick run to get my feet wet again.  Over the week break between Spring and Summer quarters, I took a 10-day online class through the Sloan-C Consortium.  This was the first time I've ever been a student in an online class, amazingly enough.  It was worth the whole experience just to find myself facing a new platform I was unfamiliar with (Moodle) and trying to manage navigation features, find what work I was supposed to complete and by when, and see another instructor's methodology for building meaningful discussion platforms.


The course: "Supporting and Engaging Students through Social Media."  Pretty appropriate for a blogging instructor, right?  I figured it would let me talk about Facebook, if nothing else.  The range of experience with social media in others taking the class was insightful--lots of newbies, lots of hard-core online geeks, and a few like me who fell somewhere in between.  Twitter seems ubiquitous...maybe this pushed me one step closer to joining it.  Maybe.


Here's one pretty image that I'll refer back to for personal use.  Nice graphic categorization of tools available:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jess3saves/3509300772/


I think only one or two other comp instructors were in the course.  Most others were instructors in other fields, or department managers or IT folks.  Some of the ideas shared were not very applicable to my own needs (though maybe will be worth passing along to others at TCC if the situation comes up).  I built a project submission around furthering my online group activity and taking it one step further using a wiki at WikiSpaces, which I'll continue to play with the rest of the summer.


In all honesty, I'll admit that the content of the class was fairly light (it was only a 10-dayer, after all).  I found it to be one of those get-out-what-you-put-in situations, and so I got what I needed.  It's awesome that the state pays for us to sit in on these seminars, and I'm sure I'll complete another in the near future...though definitely NOT during finals week or off week again.