Yesterday, I had another interesting meeting. This time, I met with Mark Hawkes who is the DL Unit Representative for the Ministry of Education in B.C. He wanted to know what I thought quality instruction looked like via DL. As part of my response, I stressed the importance of interaction between students and instructor and between students and their classmates. Unfortunately, although I feel this is really important, I don’t think there is enough interaction between myself and my students and there is virtually no interaction between my students and their peers.
Ironically, before starting my position as a DL instructor, I was using online discussion boards and blogs in my “bricks and mortar” classroom to facilitate more interaction between all said parties. As a DL instructor, however, I have not found the same use for these web 2.0 technologies. Sure, each student could maintain a blog, but who is going to read it? Of couse, I would, but is that a big enough audience?
Because Mark has been traveling around, visiting other DL centres, he had a great suggestion for me. He recently met with another DL English teacher. He suggested that we get together to collaborate and share students. That way, I might be able to widen the audience for my current students. Not only would we be able to broaden our horizons, we could also get together to collaborate on the delivery of instruction, as this was another concern of mine regarding quality instruction.
Although high school English courses are being offered online, the content of the courses is still very much traditional in that students are often asked to read and answer questions. I would like to structure the curriculum so that it incorporates more of a constructivist approach to learning.
Again, Mark had some fascinating suggestions, and I thought I would share them because they are too good to keep to myself! First, he suggested that I look at www.machinima.com. This site offers people the opportunity to explore and make movies in virtual worlds. He recommended “Second Life.” This is one of the many virtual worlds already created. Although this is an adult version, there’s a teen version as well. Students could get together to create 3-dimensional movies. Although this would certainly transform the traditional approach to learning the curriculum, it still doesn’t solve my dilemma of having students working at different paces throughout the course.
The last morsel of enlightment he offered was to check out www.activeworlds.com. Active Worlds lets users visit and/or create 3D worlds. Users can visit these worlds and chat with other users visiting. Again, the creation of a 3D world would lend itself nicely to group collaboration. I can just see the assignment now: create a day in the life of Shakespeare…
My time with Mark was short, but I think it will have a big impact on the way I think about DL instruction. I was happy to hear that Mark will be presenting a workshop on virtual worlds at the BC Education Online Conference on April 22nd. I can’t wait to go!
Tags: English, DL, interaction, web 2.0 technologies, virtual worlds, constructivist, Machinima, Active Worlds
