Every week we have
two deadlines - mid-Wednesday and Sunday. The first part of the week is
for reading course materials, completing assignments and participating in
discussion thread. So the second part of the week gives us possibility to
continue our "investigation" or to think over the results we got.
This week I learned two things.
First is a possibility to have access to necessary
resources from any computer. Being at home or at work or participating in some
seminar or courses you can find your favourte sites which you use or used at
any time and you don't need remember its name, address, etc. I appreciate this
possibility very much as sometimes I prepare for my classes at home, sometimes
at work. It the Discussion thread I compared it with Dropbox or Google drive.
As for students it can be useful for them, for example, for my master’s
students while doing their research – in their delicious page they can create
the list with sites for their research and they’ll have access to these sites
and to this list from libraries, from home, cafes, from everywhere and at any
time.
The second thing I learned is podcast. Some my
colleagues told a lot about it because they have their research in the domain
of podcasts and students’ autonomy. They even showed its options but John Gay
said: “Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I
understand”. That’s the true. Due to our assignment I had to do it and finally
I know what it is, how to work with it and where it can be used.
Let’s see. Some assignments suggest students to
prepare a speech or report and in the class it’s impossible to listen and
discuss all the reports. Podcasts give possibility to discuss all the reports:
some of tem will be delivered and discussed in the class and others – on-line.
Next time students who reported in the class will do it on-line and vice versa.
A lot of variants can be used and their number is
infinite.
