In my forum posting for Week 17 A 6 I wrote some stuff I didn’t want to repeat in my blog. It was sensitive stuff, and the people I’m talking about would know who they are. I didn’t want this going public in my blog.
Is this one of the ways forums have an advantage over blogs…
I’ve been working all day on making my shorlist of activities for TMA2. It’s been hard, some have been easier to realise than others. I’ve got my 4.
I used some mindmapping software called Mindjet which is available for Warwick Uni staff and students to download. It’s not a web-hosted tool like Mindmeister but because it’s free it has so many more tools that the web one I was using before. To get as many tools in mindmeister you have to pay.
Anyway, I found it a really useful tool for juggling around all my course resources and making notes/brainstorming what to do, what to include, revising each activity on the shortlist so I could be sure the one’s picked were worth while.
It was really good for throwing things up, moving them around, linking and cross linking etc. The problem I faced was that I needed to refer to the course notes (either in print or online), my activity notes, my blog, the forums and other people’s blogs as the “learning” has taken place in so many places – a problem I identified a few blogs ago.
Last night I was toying with writing it down on paper, but this didn’t allow for mistakes, moving things around, running out of space, not being able to read my writing etc.
The mind map was really useful. I’ve been able to write quick things, expand on them in notes, add links, flag things to help organise it in my mind (like different levels of the short list).
I now think I’ve probably done most of the ground work for this first part of the TMA and could potentially start writing draft 1 for each of the 4. I know it’ll be many drafts, draft 1 is usually unlimited by word counts. everything I want to say, then I go through it reducing the work count, making it more succinct, structuring it better etc etc.
Once all that is done I’ve then got to think about part 2 of the essay…the discussion bit…I see my weekend disappearing again and my family life suffering! It’s a tough sacrifice. I’m really glad I got on ahead with weeks 13/14 so I could start the TMA a bit early. Gosh, if I’d left it til next week I’d be in trouble.
The course hasn’t released Block 3 yet so I still can’t plan ahead for my holidays. I just hope they do soon as I want to get ahead as soon as I’ve done the TMA again so that I can relax a bit on holiday. I’d rather be ahead than behind.
http://bieni64.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/week-1314-wrapping-up-activity-2/#comment-43
“I have access to similar technology but feel I’m much more prone to use it in the ‘intended way’ – eg. using my mp3 player for music (and the occasional podcast of a radio programme I missed), using the DVD player for a DVD rather than my laptop etc.” This is a good point Frauke. I was thinking about how taking a portable DVD player on holiday to keep Livvy entertained, but then realised that I was planning to take my laptop and wouldn’t that do. But then again, we’d be fighting over using it! The idea is to keep her quiet while I get some studying done on holiday.
She also said that she’s been trying to do everything justice but now feels that maybe she needs to be more of a strategic skimmer. I’m like Frauke in terms of wanting to do everything justice, but too am starting to speed things up. In the last 2 weeks I’ve decided to try and go “paper-less” and I think this has helped speed things up. I find speed reading and skimming easier on screen – is this because that’s how I use technology – I am always fast on the computer, people can never keep up. But reading of print, I’m slow, I can’t concentrate,I end up reading and re-reading and having to make copious notes which takes ages. By copying the website or pdf into Word or One Note I just edit that, cut, highlight and make comments, instead of making additional notes.
The last activty (weeks 13 and 14 Act. 4) only took my just over an hour, and not the 4 hours proposed by the authors…and I do feel I’ve done it justice.
With the TMA looming I know the activities I select to talk about will probably end up being done again to be sure I’ve got enough good stuff to talk about.
Just spent over an hour updating my blog on summarising the Elluminate tutorial we had on Sunday. Was this a waste of time? I hope not, as part of this course is understanding the use of technology by me and others, so this is an important step but it is not factored into the study time.
My total study hours for Week 12 is now at least 26 hours!
On Sunday I experienced my first student led (lead, I never know) online tutorial session. There were 6 of us in the session. a few days before I realised that I didn’t think Lesley would be at the session and to save time in the hour we needed to get over the discussion over what we would discuss so we could save time in the session so I posted up some suggestions, bringing in suggestions from others about blogging. I took Week 12 activities and made some questions to help us learn from each others experiences and relate these to the articles we read rather than just trying to get us all to go over the questions we’d already answered. My motivation for this session was to learn from others experiences.
No one else made any suggestions and every seemed happy with mine. Somehow I ended up starting the session off. Now, since I’ve had time to reflect, I think this is very interesting. Did I wade in and take over or did this happen naturally? I know that in face to face tutorials I tend to take the lead and people look at me for guidance as I’m the REALLY proactive one. I can see how this would happen in face to face, because I’m the one who talks to everyone, gets everyone comfortable, tends to be the most active with the presenter etc etc. So how did this transfer to the online environment.
In the forums I’m really active and people can see that. On my blog I’m really active and as noted, I’m getting lots of traffic on my blog now and as Simon says, it is probably due to my levels of activity on the forum that I’ve attracted attention from the tutor group here.
So as in face to face sessions, when one is seen to be active, other student’s rely on you to take the lead in other activities too. (note for readers, when I say rely I don’t mean this in a negative way I just can’t think of a better word to describe it).
As a result of my ending up usually taking the lead on group activities f2f, I had created a self image that I must be bossy and people just do what I say (as always jumping to the negative conclusion). However, i hope, and don’t think my bossy side has been conveyed in the online forum and if it has, I wonder how? It’s not like I can interrupt, show that I’m not listening, give visual clues as to my desire to lead, etc etc.
So does that mean my selfimage is all wrong, it’s not that I’m bossy it’s just that I’m perceived as a useful co-student and therefore if I take the lead, people know they’ll be getting something useful out of it???? Or is it that people know, don’t worry, Emma will do it, but I would say that in H800 we’ve not had enough group/student lead activities yet for people to have that assumption about me….I could hypothesize all day.
At the end of the session discussion was heading towards another similar discussion next week so I could see no one was taking the lead in wanting to actually organise it and I could see that if someone didn’t organise it, it wouldn’t happen so I asked for someone to take on the mantle. Pat offered to do this.
However, I now see in the forum that Pat’s understanding of what I was asking for was different to mine as it looks as though he wanted to set up a wiki for discussion rather than an elluminate for a discussion. The question is now, do I try and organise a student lead session or do I just sit back. If I sit back then no-one, including me, will benefit from the opportunity to have discussion like we did the other day. But, it really needs someone to design good discussion items for it to be effective. Do I now, already have a good track record at this, should I just go for it!
I’d do it if asked, but after doing the last one I 1) want to give someone else a chance and 2) don’t want to appear bossy. 
Well thanks to Livvy not going to bed until 9 I had an interrupted night’s study. Trouble is one of the local pubs is has an irish band on Wed night and we really want to go, a) having not been out in an age just us b) having to miss Paddy’s day due to it being a week day and family etc etc and c) why not! So I need to get ahead…TMA is looming.
Anyway, time spent so far.
Activity 1 pre-reading – supposed to take 1 hour, I used 1.5 hours – due to reading, note taking and then shortening notes.
Activity 1a – supposed to take 1 hour, I used 15 minutes
Activity 1b – supposed to take 1 hour, I used 1.5 hours but I don’t think I’ve done it justice. I can’t find the energy to deal with the forum discussion yet….
So far, total hours planned: 3
Total hours used: 3 hours 15 minutes – but not quite in the same way the authors intended.
NB Study time includes setting up ie finding articles/opening OU website/downloading PDFs, converted to word or text to enable me to make notes. Making notes and editting blog. Checking forums and other people’s blogs. Made much easier now by me setting up Google Reader yesterday – which stole a few hours from my study time too!
18 hours study in the plan, plus all the extra I do. Is it possible to get these 2 weeks done by the end of next weekend so I have 2 weeks for the TMA allowing for the bank holiday…
we’ll see..I wonder if they’ve factored in blogging time…
I’m going to keep a record of my hours this week.
Time stipulated by authors in black.
Pre reading 1 hour – actual 1.5 hours
1a 1 hour – actual 15 minutes
1b and 1c 2 hours – actual 2.5 hours and counting as any discussions develop.
Total for activity: 4 1/4 – should have been 4 so not bad!
Pre reading 1/2 hr
2a 1 hour
2b 1 hour
2c 1/2 hour
2d 1 hour
Pre reading 1 hour
3a 1 hour
3b 2 hours
3c 1 1/2 hours
Pre reading 1 hour
4a 2 hours
4b 2 hours
commenting on lots of blogs, writing my own blogs, contributing to the forum is:
how will I know where I’ve said what or who has said what where so I can go back to it for the TMA! Should I really have a delicious Tag for all things that I’ve said or read that are interesting….HELP I think I’m going to meet myself in a parallel world soon!
Regarding approaches to learning, deep/surface/strategic approaches etc etc. In Activity 5 I could have simply leapfrogged this exploration of econferencing.
Not only have I learnt about the uses of econferencing in education but I have reinforced and reflected on the messages in the rest of this week about deep and surface learning and approaches of learners. This activity and my choice to go DEEP helps me understand the theories explained in the rest of this week. Not only what I’ve learnt in it, but what my approach to it has taught me. And it’s mainly cos it’s really work relevant.
Now that I’ve learnt so much about the use and quality implicaitons on learners of econferencing I have a new ramble for myslf – Did I really say this last week?
I can really see me including this activity in the TMA now! I’m really pleased I invested 3 hours of my Friday evening and about 1 1/2 last night too in finding the articles, to it now. Kept me off the bottle of wine in the fridge too….or had it….seeing as my blog has been labelled the tutor group pub (something I’m more than happy about by the way, I love entertaining)
Frauke asked me earlier in the week how I kept up all this work – the study, the forums, the blogs (mine and everyone elses) I joked that it was because I am a fast reader/typer. However, I’ve just calculated how much time I’ve spent on Week 12 so far, and I reckon it’s at least 23hours! 8 over the required time and there is still more collaborative blogging to do and the tutorial on Sunday! But I could have done the bare minimum, but I have really enjoyed it and now at the end of Activity 5, it’s all come together really nicely.
Here I come....
At WBS we’re our focus in on online synchronous video conferencing tutorials. On my MA course with the OU we have online tutorials like these every so often. I was thinking about which of the two dates offered to attend today and what crossed my mind is that these tutorials are adding extra work to my week as I know that the online tutorial won’t replace any discussion that goes on in the forums, it will just enhance it so it won’t remove an hour of forum participation but tutorials should always be within the 15 hours study a week, not additional to it.
Even though we are always saying this at work too, I realise that we are adding workload to the students and not taking anything away. I wonder if this is a reason for the low turnout’s at these sessions.
For me, the evening slot interrupts the time I use to work through the learning activities and the weekend slot is difficult for me to plan around as our weekends are mad.
Would I be better spending that time just studying. What are the tutorials really adding for me…and therefore, for my students too?
