The discussion boards in Vista have me feeling muddled. There are so many discussion going on at once, I am not sure where to reply and most of what I have to say has already been said. I wish that we had one discussion per week rather than trying to wade through five discussions at once. I am better able to focus on and expand on one discussion at a time. Am I the only one feeling this lost? If so, I am in the wrong class....
The WebQuest is underway and off to a decent start. I'm very happy to have changed my focus for the assignment. Butterflies is working much better than bears. So far so...ok. I don't know- we'll see. :) I worked on it for about 6 hours last night.
The webpage is a different story all together! I have no idea where to take that one. I just looked over the assignment page again and I am at a complete loss. Around 1 am last night, I was wondering why in the world I wasn't working on the assignment that was due first. I decided that I just needed to make a dent in something...anything.
I just read over the discussion boards in vista. Everyone has a lot of great ideas for using wikis, blogs, and podcasts in their classrooms (and in business). I really liked the idea about using pseudonyms with discussion boards in the class. The teacher would be the only other person to know the pseudonym. This would allow the students to have some anonymity while discussing various topics with their peers, yet would still hold them accountable to the teacher for any inappropriate comments.
Inappropriate comments has actually been a worry that a number of people have expressed. I think that the teacher needs to be closely monitoring what is being posted as well as discussing expectations before beginning as well as reviewing those expectations often.
Wow! reading back over this post, I sound like Debbie Downer from SNL.
Hopefully can paint a rosier picture later in the week. Perhaps after I figure out my website proposal????? :)
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Jen. I'm with you! I have a lot of work to do on my website proposal and no real idea where to begin. I am taking two other classes on top of this one so I guess my kitchen will stay dirty for another day. . . or two.
ReplyDeleteAs for Vista discussion boards, they are lacking and that's being nice. They seem unorganized and I keep clicking on something else to respond to a post and then I lose the other new posts into a sea of old ones. A search feature would be nice. Well, good luck tonight. At least you know you're not alone!
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ReplyDeleteJen,
ReplyDeleteNot sure if it will help but in Vista, the unread ones will be in black at the top of the page by discussions (all topics left and all my posts will be on the right). You may click those and see what is unread. If you want to read all, under a topic, then I click on the first one, oldest date, and then click display entire thread and quickly move down through the text until I remember where I left off. So if you look for the bold/dark black it will at least get you to the 'new stuff'. If this is your first class, the good thing is that discussions have not been locked like some other classes I have been in. Yes there seems to be many discussions but I hope that what we see on the board is all we need to worry about. Each ITEC professor handles discussions differently...some doesn't use them at all (that was rough), and some require them at certain times. Not sure if this helped, but I know I struggled at first until I got the hang of it. A way to get a search feature (not fun but it works), display the complete thread and cut and paste OR save as file and reopen in notepad or word doc. If you get interrupted you can mark message as 'unread' so it can be easily found in bold for later reading. Goodluck!
Hi Jen,
ReplyDeleteMy observation is that the use and structure of the course has to do with the instructional style of the teacher, Dr. Ingram in this case. I'm with you on not knowing where to go..truly. But,it is my 3rd course with him and I think I'm starting to catch on. Like my stats course this semester has a very linear approach and is week by week, chapter by chapter. I think Dr. Ingram opens it up a bit to keep our individual interests peaked and this enables us to kind of "hop around" to our own styles and interests as well. What helps me is just to be sure to dedicate xx amount of time to reading course materials - maybe 3-5 hours a week - before looking at or touching the discussions. Then, I hop around and look at ones that help to supplement my understanding before I try to post anything.
Thanks for all the advice!
ReplyDelete