Concluding Comments on CUIN 7376: What I Learned.

The curriculum of this course was similar to the courses I've taken on statistical methods. However, in this class the methods studied were not statistical methods, but rather Web 2.0 tools. This was like those other methods courses in that we learned about a large number of methods, without going into much detail as a class on any one of them. This is appropriate, given that most of the tools we looked at will not be of obvious immediate use for one teacher. It's up to the individual student to figure out which tools will be useful in their own situations. In the future we will find uses for tools that are not apparent now, so it's important that we are exposed to a large variety of tools so that we can recall them in the future. Mastering the intricacies of one specific tool is a task that each student can do on their own, in their own time as they find it is useful to do so.

This semester in Cam's class I've become much more aware of how involving students in the process of teaching can greatly increase the power of a course to educate. I already knew that you learn more as a teacher than as a student (at least passive student anyway). I like to joke with my students that teaching is a great scam, because the more I get them to teach each other and do my job for me, the better a teacher I am. Of course, I'm only joking since coordinating students to teach each other is at least as much work as giving a lecture.

That said, I think this course was about as good an example I can think of where the students acted as teachers for themsleves and each other. By having us turn in our homework as blog posts and forum posts, it allowed us to learn form each other. Given that each one of us learns and expresses ourselves in different ways, the "educational power" of the course is greatly expanded when the talents of all the students are harnessed as they were in this class. It's unlikely that a student will be unable to engage with at least some of what the other students present.

An example of this is that I learned about Vyew by reading Jing's blog. I reviewed Twiddla which is similar to Vyew, and after comparing the two I think I would prefer to use Vyew. It would be a lot of work for one person to review all of these tools, but by having the class share the labor, a lot of information can be processed and made available for everyone in the class.

The course was a bit of a whirlwind, but I think the workload was very reasonable, in part because the course was so efficient at spreading the labor, as I said before. It was hard to keep track of all the little projects we had to do, but they were all in the syllabus.

I have begun using some Web 2.0 tools in my teaching (e.g. bubbl.us), and I think the impact of CUIN 7376 will become more evident as I continue teaching. Problems and needs will come up, and I will have a new tool kit to search for solutions to those currently unanticipated challenges.

Prezi on bubbl.us and learning about animals!

Here is a link to a Prezi I created on using bubbl.us to create dichotous keys as a full class group activity.  Thank you to my General Zoology students for your feedback that helped me put together this presentation!