Again, this being on the west coast is making my blog look kind of odd as I’m posting this at midnight local time, but it will appear at like 3:00am. Anyway, today in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog , presented by ProBlogger Blog Tips , Darren asked us to Set Up ‘Alerts’ to Monitor What is Happening in Your Niche [Day 10 - 31DBBB] .
This was a very easy one for me, as I already have:
-daily Yahoo! alerts for virtual school and cyber school
-weekly Google alerts for virtual school and cyber school
-a real-time Google alert for “Michael Barbour” and “Virtual High School Meanderings”
Both of these meet Darren’s suggestion, as he asked us to create alerts for both “industry words” and “vanity alerts”.
My readers most often see the fruits of these alerts through the weekly Virtual Schooling In The News feature that I post each Saturday.
AERA 2009 – K-12 Online Teachers: SIG-Online Teaching and Learning.
This final entry deals with the discussants remarks. As a reminder, the session was:
K-12 Online Teachers: SIG-Online Teaching and Learning
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Tue, Apr 14 – 12:25pm – 1:55pm Building/Room: San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina / Newport Beach
Title Displayed in Event Calendar: K-12 Online Teachers
Session Participants:
Chair: Marclyn Porter (University of Tennessee – Chattanooga)
Who’s at the Keyboard? A Description of K-12 Online Teachers in the United States
-Leanna Matchett Archambault (Arizona State University), Kent J. Crippen (University of Nevada – Las Vegas)
Online Professional Development in Science Content and Pedagogy
-Cathy Cavanaugh (University of Florida), Kara M. Dawson (University of Florida)
Strategies for Teaching Online Courses Within the Sub-Saharan African Context: An Instructor’s Recommendations
-Stephen A. Asunka (Teachers College, Columbia University), Hui Soo Chae (Teachers College, Columbia University)
Discussant: Mark A. Horney (University of Oregon)
Abstract:This session will feature three papers on issues associated with online learning in K-12 environments.
The discussant was Mark Horney of the Center for Electronic Studying at the University of Oregon, who indicated that his background is primarily in researching digital books and digital literacy. His discussion was focused on four themes.
The first was that regardless of what you do in a paper and presentation the audience and the discussant will always want something else. In his case, he wanted to see more of the actual content items (e.g., see more of the science modules from Cathy’s presentation or what was this new model that attracted teachers in Leanna’s presentation).
The second thing focused on our interest and enthusiasm in the exciting things that technology can do in education. However, we need to curb that enthusiasm and simply because we have proven something as effective, it doesn’t mean that folks are as accepting of this effectiveness as we are.
The third theme was where the three papers were in terms of where the technology was in relation to the mainstream. For example, in the Ghana example they were just starting and the findings were very basic and distance education was something that was ground breaking in that context. In the online teachers survey (i.e., Leanna’s), the responses indicated that online teaching at the K-12 level was still somewhat on the fringe. With regards to Cathy’s presentation, it was designed to impact all teachers so it was or had achieved mainstream status.
Finally, the discussant spoke about the need to bring our students along in this technology journey. He indicated that he didn’t buy into the whole digital natives stuff, and that students technical knowledge was quite shallow and we need to make sure that our students have the technological skills to be able to take advantage of and be successful in this environment.
I’ll be honest and say that it was a typical AERA discussant – the majority of the comments were more related to the discussant’s own area of research with only some snippets of information or add-on comments related to the three papers. But this is typical of most AERA discussants – which tend to come in two forms: those who relate everything to their own context and speak very little about the papers OR those who simply base the research presented in the papers (i.e., the mean discussant). I still wonder why AERA continues to maintain this role when so few prove to be useful to the audience or the presenters – as the time reserved is often enough to fit in an additional paper.