I presented at SIDLIT last week, it's a local tech conference and a great sharing and learning opportunity. My presentation was titled "Online teaching presence and student achievement". I have been thinking about what "teaching presence" is in the online classroom and it really helped me organize my thoughts about it by having to share my thoughts with others. I think the presentation pretty well, and I had fun creating a Wordle. I also recruited my hubby to record a snippet of music to embed in it. I'm still working on making sure that the diagram that I used is not copyright protected, I'm pretty sure it's okay, but well no reason to take chances. If I can clear it, I'll post it here. Here's the Wordle that I made, and it's not perfect, but I think it gets the message across.
I received positive comments on my approach to my audience to think about the concept of "teaching presence". I had everyone close their eyes and be very quiet and I just waited a while and we sat there in silence (well, except for the two attendees who slipped in late, but they were fairly quiet, too). Then I said okay, now open your eyes, and asked how did you know I was still in the room? I stepped out of the room - did you know that? (Actually I didn't but should have). I asked, " How would you know that I was still here? You didn't really know if I was there because you could not see me or hear me. I played the music which asks "is there anybody in there?" and it made the point, if you do not communicate with your students in the online class, then how do they know you are there?
Now I have to be honest, I haven't blogged for a while (no time!) but, I've been reading Jane Bolker's book, "Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis". I think it's helpful and in it she talks about about writing, and how important it is to write every day. I also agree with her comments on the challenge of sharing what you write--- it's quite scary to step out and share what you are thinking, especially if there's a chance that experts out there might run across your writing. So, in a leap of faith, I'm going to try to work here a bit more than I have and work on writing my background materials some each day - probably more than 15 minutes, though (grin). Wish me luck and if you have any suggestions, please feel free to share them.
