I started this blog back in August 2011 when I signed up for the MiraCosta Online Teaching Certificate Program for Online Teaching.
It’s a 24 week online course covering many aspects of online teaching. For me it was a unique online experience, full of many interesting assignments, fascinating people and also a lot of fun.
All of my work for the course has been posted in this blog under the category and tag potcert11. Last week our class met online for our graduation and awards ceremony. There’s a video of the proceedings here.

I thought it would be fitting to leave one last potcert11 blog post here to show off my certificate.

If you’re interested in the training, I hear another session is planned for this fall, so keep an eye on Pedagogy First for more information.

I don’t know what’s next for this blog, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.
Are there any questions?

List of my Blog posts for Pedagogy First,  the Mira Costa College Program for Online Teaching Certificate Program, September 1, 2011 – April 2012

Week 1: Introduction (September 1 – September 7)

Introduction post – wondering what I’ve gotten myself into.

Now What?! – posted August 28  (6 comments)

Week 2: Teaching and Learning Online (September 8 – September 14)

In week two I posted twice. This is where I realized I didn’t need to blog about everything I’d covered all week. Thanks to Lisa’s “eek” post, I decided to select one topic from the week to focus on in my blog. So my first post for this week was kind of a reflection on starting the class. In my second post I spun off into a topic from the reading that I found interesting. I also learned to add hyper-links in my blog posts

How I Spent My Summer Vacation – posted September 10 (0 comments)

Don’t Touch Me There – posted September 11 (4 comments)

Week 3: Pedagogy and Course Design (September 15 – September 21)

For week three I focused on writing down and discussing some objectives for an online class based on the materials I studied during the week. I’m asking a lot of questions in my blog at his point. I’m getting more comfortable with WordPress too.

What’s the difference? – posted September 18 (4 comments)

Week 4: Materials for Online (September 22 – September 28)

I was really taken with Prezi, and my blog post was an embedded Prezi presentation. I used the Prezi media to cover some of my thoughts on course design in the form of a student orientation presentation. I learned to embed content from an external site.  I managed to do a second post this week with some thoughts about HTML.

Playing With Prezi – posted September 24  (5 comments)

HTML spoken here – posted September 24  (4 comments)

Week 5: The Online Syllabus (September 29 – October 5)

I liked the Interactive Syllabus presentation a lot and blogged about it and how I could adapt my existing online syllabus to make it more interactive. I even made a little example web page in Javascript to show off an idea and linked to that.

Front and Center Syllabus – posted October 3  (5 comments)

Week 6: Creating Presentations (October 6 – October 12)

I reminisced and rambled about Powerpoint and some of the new ideas that came out of this weeks material. I also spend a lot of time looking for other online presentation apps and posted some links. I got to try out Jing, and used it to make a little tour of my Google site of one of my classes. I embedded the Jing video in my blog.

Sliding Through – posted October 9  (5 comments)

Week 7: The Online Classroom (October 13 – October 19)

I was very eager to learn about Twitter, so I blogged about that. This was also the week we started our two-week community-style discussions, so I tried to start a discussion of Twitter tools. I think that there were two or three other classmates blogging about Twitter this week, so there was a lot of discussion but it was spread across several blogs.  Later in the week someone introduced Symbaloo and I made up a community Symbaloo of all our blogs to share with the group.

Trick or Tweet – posted October 16  (5 comments)

Class symbaloo – posted October 19  (2 comments)

Week 8: Creating Community (October 20 – October 26)

I may have gotten a little off-topic this week, but I re-visited the A. Couros presentation from Week 2 and blogged about his ECC831 class which is running in parallel with our class. I used that as a springboard to talk about how I was coping with the information overload at this point in the course. I thought it might be a good discussion topic.  I also got absorbed in watching several Voicethread demos after Pilar’s Voicethread introduction. I left a Voicethread comment there.

Aside: Shortly after publishing this post I began to get tons of spam comments. I got thirty in one day and nearly 130 over the next two weeks or so. At first I thought it might have something to do with using POT in the title. Later I discovered that my post was listed as a pingback on Dr. Couros’ blog, so maybe that had something to do with it. I don’t know, but I got an unplanned lesson in WordPress spam management this week.

The Blur of POT – posted October 22  (6 comments)

Week 9: Student Activities (October 27 -November 2)

I stored several links to Diigo with animations on Network technology. Some of them were found from MERLOT. I joined the group in Second Life for Cris’ presentation there. I blogged about that experience. I finally tried adding some pictures to my blog this week.

A Day in the (Second) Life – posted November 1  (2 comments)

Week 10: Open Platforms for Teaching and Learning (November 3 – November 9)

I focused on Web Site building tools this week. I made a little sample “introduction to my class” site in Google sites and made a You-Tube video which I embedded into the site along with my Prezi presentation from week 4. I also learned about several other web building sites, such as WIX, which I played with for a while.

Welcomes and Web Logs – posted November 6  (1 comment)

Week 11: Class Resources and Intellectual Property (November 10 – November 16)

The major topics this week were copyright issues and accessibility. I went through all the materials but chose to focus on the accessibility topic in my blog. Aside from several links I didn’t really try anything new with my blog this week. I suppose it would have been better to include some pictures or something, but after reading all the copyright restrictions, I was a little gun shy about trying anything like that.

Accessible Resources – posted November 13 (1 comment)

Week 12 – Resources Online / Mid-year Self-Assesment Check (November 17 – November 23)

I spent a lot of time exploring the OER and OCW sites in this weeks material and even discovered a few more. I didn’t really leave myself enough time for blogging this week, so my post was a little lean this time.

Free Learning on the Web – posted November 20  (0 comments)

List of my Blog posts for the Mira Costa College Program for Online Teaching Certificate Program, September 1, 2011 – November 23, 2011

potcert11 Mid Term post – posted November 27, 2011  (1 comment)

Week 13 – Creating Class Elements Part 1: Images and screenshots (February 1 – February 7)

I learned a lot about Flickr and wrote up a tutorial covering Flickr notations and tools for adding CCI citations when using Flickr pictures.  I cross posted this to DS106.

Flickr Fun – posted February 5, 2012 (3 comments)

Week 14 – Creating Class Elements Part 2: Audio and video (February 8 – February 14)

Experiments with Eyejot, Slideshare and Present.me – fun stuff.

Video Blogging for #potcert11 – posted February 14, 2012 (0 comments)

Week 15 – Creating Class Elements Part 3: Screencasting and multimedia (February 15 – February 21)

Mindmapping (Mind42.com), Surveys (SurveyMonkey) and Screencasting (Screenr). I tried all these tools out and posted my demonstrations.

Mind-maps, Surveys and Screencasts – #potcert11 – posted February 20, 2012 (0 comments)

Week 16 – Our Students Online (February 22 – February 28)

Lot of reading this week about students and how they use the technology – very interesting. I blogged about some of my impressions from the readings.

Our Students Online – notes and thoughts #potcert11 week 16 – posted February 28, 2012 (1 comment)

We also did FAQs for online classes. Since I didn’t have a specific class in mind, I wrote up some general online learning FAQs with guidelines for how to write the answers.

Some FAQs guidelines for online courses – #potcert11 – posted February 28, 2012 (1 comment)

Week 17 – Classroom Management  (February 29 – March 6)

The readings were very thought provoking and I tried to share some of my thoughts in my blog. I also included another article that I found and that drew a couple of comments.

Online Classroom Management notes – #potcert11 – posted March 06, 2012 (2 comments)

Week 18 – The Course Management System  (March 7 – March 13)

We were supposed to learn about an LMS that we hadn’t used before. I haven’t used any so I focused on Blackboard and Moodle since those are ones I hear about most often. I watched some online demos. I also blogged about some other articles I looked at this week.

The Course Management System notes – Week 18 #potcert11 – posted March 13, 2012 (3 comments)

Week 19 – Web-Enhanced, Hybrid and Open Classes (March 14 – March 20)

Inspired by some other class members, I tried video blogging this week, recording my remarks on this weeks readings. I reviewed the different levels of online engagement and discussed some of the web-enhancements I’ve used in my classes. I also briefly discussed flipped classes and a way to progress from on-site to online classes.

A mix of onsite and online schooling – Week 19 #potcert11 – posted March 19, 2012  (1 comment)

Week 20 – Introduction to Educational Technology and Instructional Design (March 21 – March 27)

Another video blog. I talked about my take on the usefulness of Educational Technology and Instructional Design and the value of technology in education.

Intro to educational technology & instructional design – Week 20 #potcert11 – posted March 26, 2012 (0 comments)

Week 21 – Introduction to Online Education Theory (March 28 – April 3)

An introduction and overview of three models or theories – Instructivism, Constructivism and Connectivism. I tried to describe my understanding of these theories. I also ranted on some of the other readings from this week.

Notes on Week 21: Introduction to online education theory #potcert11 – posted April 01, 2012 (0 comments)

Week 22 – Personal Learning Networks (April 4 – April 10)

I summarized on the week’s readings and reflected a little about my own PLN. A key point from this week is that with so many changes going on, we need our PLNs to try to keep up to date. Learning doesn’t  stop just because we’re at the end of the course.

Notes on Week 22: Personal Learning Networks #potcert11 – posted April 08, 2012 (0 comments)

Week 23 – Presentations (April 11 – April 17)

I spent a lot of time learning to use an assortment of video tools to make my presentation. I embedded my youtube presentation in my blog post this week. I tried to see all the other presentations and comment on each one.

Pedagogy First reflections and review #potcert11 – posted April 12, 2012 (8 comments)

Week 24 – Summarize, assess and contribute (April 18 – April 24)

I re-posted some material from earlier in the course showing some Google sites.

Class Web Site Tour #potcert11 – posted April 20, 2012

This post contains links to all my posts for Pedagogy First 2011/2012

Final Summary of Blog posts #potcert11 – posted April 20, 2012

Final Thoughts

Based on the Self-Assessment and Rubric, I think I’ve done well keeping up with this class. It’s been a lot of fun trying out many new things and all the sharing and feedback has been great. I look forward to using many of the things I’ve learned here in future teaching assignments.

The Pedagogy First program has been a unique online experience for me.  In addition to the online teaching instruction, I have benefited from an awareness of many new online tools and services and a growing network of contacts and connections online. I’m sure I’ll be stopping by to see what’s going on in future sessions and if I can be of any help, please let me know.

Are there any questions?

Week 24: Summarize, assess and contribute

This weeks assignment -

• Review the POT Certificate Class Rubric and create a post containing a list of links to all your posts for the year, labeled by Week number. Make a brief statement about the quality of each post and what it showed about your learning. Please Note: This post is assessed for earning the certificate.
• Summarize your thoughts about this program.
• Do the course evaluation!
• Optional: Create and post a short (Jing?) tour through one of your online courses, class websites, or instructional units, to be used as an example to other faculty. This can be done anytime within the next few weeks, since it’s for next year’s class.

I’ll post my blog list separately. This post is in response to the last bullet in this weeks tasks.

Class Web Site tour

Earlier in the course (week 6) I posted a Jing tour through my class web sites on Google sites. These were for my on-site classes from last year. I guess you could say I was running web-enhanced classes at the time. Since I don’t have an online class to show yet, I’m re-posting this. Feel free to use it if you think it would be helpful.

Here’s a link to the original week 6 blog post.

Sample welcome site

Also, in week 10, I made a sample welcome site for an imaginary course and posted that in my blog. Here’s a link to the original week 10 blog post.

And this is a link to the Google site.

Are there any questions?

Here’s my week 23 presentation for the 2011-2012 Pedagogy First Program for Online Teaching Certificate class. It’s a review of the course along with some personal reflections. I tried to develop it from the perspective of someone watching that hasn’t taken the course but might want to know what it’s like.

It’s mostly a bunch of screenshots and screencasts from the class and my blog and some webcam shots of me. I also used some screenshots from other participants, I hope no one minds. It’s not that I’m trying to take credit for anyone’s work. I’m just trying to capture something of the Pedagogy First experience, and the contributions of everyone are part of that.

I chose to work with video because I wanted to learn more about it. I’ve been following the activity on DS106 and they have been doing video projects recently. I haven’t had much time to work on DS106 assignments, but I wanted to try out some of the tools and tricks I learned about there, so I thought this presentation project would be a good place to experiment. I guess that makes you all my experimental subjects.

I also feel like I need more experience speaking in front of a webcam before I start making class materials, so this was another chance to practice that.

It took a lot longer to make than I expected, but I learned a lot about working with video, so I think it was worthwhile.

It turns out to be 11 minutes, slightly longer than requested, but you can stop it any time you want.

As mentioned, I had to pare down my original draft quite a bit. I would have liked to say more about the group interactions. So much of the learning in the program came from other participants and not just from the materials provided by the facilitators.

I also cut the following paragraph because it was not really about the program, but I still wanted to share it -

During the semester break I had time to follow up on some references and contacts from the first half of the course. In the process, I discovered DS106, another online phenomenon. It appealed to me for some of the same reasons as Pedagogy First, and I enjoyed a brief fling with yams and fat cats and animated gifs. Fortunately, the resumption of Pedagogy First in February provided the necessary intervention to prevent my total assimilation into the obsessive cult-like grip of DS106. For me, Pedagogy First comes First, but after that, its DS106 for life. Resistance is futile.

Thanks for your attention.

Are there any questions?

Week 22: Personal Learning Networks

the agenda for this week

• Read: Ko & Rossen, Chapter 14: Taking Advantage of New Opportunities
• View Video: Dean Shareski, Sharing: The Moral Imperative
• Read Gardner Campbell, A Personal Cyberstructure (2009) – can also see video if you wish (about 35 minutes)
  Faculty should lead by example, “students must be effective architects, narrators, curators, and inhabitants of their own digital lives” .
• See Alec Couros, The Networked Teacher diagram (2008)
• Post: in any format you wish, any subject related to this week’s readings. Tell us what you’re working on for your presentation.

The PLN/PLE

The Networked Teacher diagram seen above has been used far and wide on the Internet and seems to have become the standard icon representing a teachers Personal Learning Network (PLN) or Personal Learning Environment (PLE). This weeks assignments, along with the Google Hangout with Todd Conaway, focused on recognizing and understanding our PLN/PLEs. When Todd showed his slide of his Personal Learning Network, I thouhgt “Hey, Todd and I have the same PLN. I use all those services, too” Well, it’s not really true that we have the same PLN. We may use the same services, but the real network is the people that we connect too. The services (Twitter, WordPress, Google, Facebook…) provide the connections, but its what’s at the end of those connections where “meaning happens. Maybe that’s the difference between the PLE and the PLN; the PLE provides the environment to make connections while the PLN is the actual network of people connected.

Personal Cyberinfrastructure

It was good to see the Gardner Campbell material. The video and article turned up earlier this year in DS106 and I blogged about it briefly at the time. I think for me, being a part of Pedagogy First this year (and now DS106) has given me a real life look into what Campbell describes as the Personal Cyberinfrastructure. Along with the Dean Shareski video, the Campbell material is recommended reading and viewing for all. “Would you like a bag of Gold?”

Ko & Rossen

The final chapter of Ko & Rossen deals with next steps for online teachers. Keeping up to date with new and emergent web technologies is going to be important given the rate of changes there. Ko and Rossen provide tips and guidelines for continuing learning in online teaching. Then there is this standout statement on page387 – “No matter how good your preparations for teaching online, there’s still more to be learned when you actually begin teaching your class.” They follow up this statement with a detailed profile of the online teacher. Ko and Rossen wrap up the chapter with a brief examination of the educational marketplace. That’s what I was doing when I found Pedagogy First and that’s probably what I’ll be doing after we’re done here.

My project progress

Due to some unexpected time away from my normal workday, I’ve been able to make good progress with my review project for week 23. It’s a video review of the course, mostly from my perspective and featuring in large part my progress with blogging, as well as some personal highlights (greatest hits?). Its mainly screen shots and screen casts from the class materials and my own blogs, but also some shots of the work from other class participants (not that I’m trying to take credit for anyone’s work. I’m just trying to capture something of the Pedagogy First experience, and the contributions of everyone are part of that.) I’m having a little trouble getting into the 5-10 minute limit for this though; it’s tending to run a bit longer than that. So I’m still working on it.

Are there any questions?

Week 21: Introduction to online education theory

This week:

• View Video: Adventures in Online Pedagogy, (Jim Sullivan and Lisa M Lane, Spring 2010 POT workshop)
• Read Article: Larry Sanger, Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age (2010)
• Read Article: George Siemens, Networks, Ecologies, and Curatorial Teaching (2007)
• Post: in any format you wish, any subject related to this week’s readings. Revise ideas for your presentation, and help others with their ideas.

There was also Lisa’s Slideshare on Online Pedagogy Models

Theoretical frameworks for teaching

Lisa’s Slideshare and the Adventures in Online Pedagogy video gave us an introduction and overview of three models or theories – Instructivism, Constructivism and Connectivism.

If I understand it,  I  can simplify as follows:

I would say that when I’m explaining to my programming class how to use ‘for-loops’, then I’m engaging in instructivism. When I ask them to write a program using ‘for-loops’, then I’m committing constructivism. When I give them a list of Internet links to forums and blogs where they can converse with experts in ‘for-loops’, then I am inviting them to participate in connectivism.

I’m not sure about class discussions, i.e in-class or online discussions among students in the class. From the video, I got the idea that this is a constructivist activity, but it seems more connectivist to me.

The little graphs, (pictured above) were presented. I’m a little confused by the constructivism and connectivism graphs, but I get the general idea. I found it interesting that the instructor is only labeled as expert in the instructivism model.

Networks, Ecologies, and Curatorial Teaching

The George Siemens article on his Connectivism blog covered some points about instructors’ roles in connectivist environments. The main message I got from it is that the instructor becomes less of a source of content, but still provides guidance, particularly in helping students learn to evaluate the quality of the connections they are making. In the video, Lisa called the instructor an environmental designer. I was thinking a wilderness guide might also be an apt description.

There are many interesting links in this article, which I scanned over and hope to get back to examine in more detail.

I also found and read another Siemens article on connectivism. It’s a little more detailed than the overview in the other material and I found it helpful.

In the ‘Adventures’ video, Lisa mentioned that Connectivism is not really a theory in the same sense as Instructivism and Constructivism. In thinking about the nodes and connections in the model, it seems that those connections could have instructivist or constructivist characteristics. Notice that some of the connections shown in The Networked Learner picture in the video has some links that are uni-directional while others are bi-directional.

Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age

I was glad to see this in the readings this week.  Sanger described some of the very concerns I’ve had about the notion that individual  learning is an obsolete relic of the pre-internet days. I’ve heard it more than once, that you can look up anything online, so there’s no need to learn anything. This has always left me bristling somehow, and Sanger put it into words.

I could really get into a rant on this topic.

That’s not to say I dislike the Internet. I use it all the time and I look stuff up there frequently. For instance, suppose I get stuck on some arcane SQL syntax. I can usually quickly get an answer online, but I have to know quite a bit in order to even ask the question, let alone understand the answer.

What good is having all the knowledge online if you don’t know how to use it? Remember that all the knowledge that’s on the Internet had to get there somehow. If we all stop learning because we can get what we need to know ‘on demand’ from the Internet, who will be left to put anything new there?

End of rant – for now.

I liked Sanger’s explanation and analysis of this, even though he ended on kind of a downbeat.

There’s a clever comment on Sangers article. It has a quote from Socrates on how ‘writing’ will just dumb-down learning

Project Plans

I’ve started putting some notes together for a presentation. I’m planning on some kind of narrated personal reflection and summary of the course using screenshots and clips from the course. I hope I can get it finished on time.

Are there any questions?