Online mistakes are public. In the real world you can fluff a line or take a wrong turn and it’s over and done with. Digital is different; permanently. I should know. I made a few this week! Not sure how many people noticed. Other than those who pointed them out. In public. Don’t you just love virtual learning 🙂
The start of any new course is challenging and TELEDA is no different. Unfamiliarity with the site, resources and participants combined with heavy workloads make it a stressful time for everyone. This week I’ve been reminded over and over of the highs and lows of e-teaching and e-learning. Hurray for the highs. They make it all worth while.
TELEDA social media and e-resources is a fully online course based on the principles of experiential learning. Each week participants take part in an activity and reflect, contextualise, align it to their practice. Activities involve the benefits and challenges of online learning (LO1), critical evaluation of digital resources for extending and supporting teaching and learning (LO2), demonstrating critical reflection and awareness of inclusive practice (LO3) in particular with the design or selection of an online learning activity (LO4) making critical and developmental use of the relevant published evidence-base (LO5). That’s TELEDA!
So what did I do wrong? Just because I e-teach it doesn’t mean I’m a techie whiz – as anyone observing me trying to get to grips with a second twitter account will testify. Here goes.
- I spelt @TELEDALincoln wrong – which didn’t help when you’re inviting people to find and follow you.
- I set a deadline for 31 December instead of 31 October – this would have meant introductions taking a bit longer than planned for.
- I forgot the set the discussion forum for users to edit their own posts – so they couldn’t – then I forgot to tick the box allow users to subscribe to threads – so they couldn’t – and as if that wasn’t enough….well, I think I got away with the other one so I’m not confessing.
- I set up a Storify of Tweets from Week One and the link shows a 404 error https://storify.com/suewatling/teleda I don’t know why. Key TELEDA: a view from Twitter into the 404 page search box instead. That works!
- I made plans for TweetMeets between 8.00 and 9.00 next week but mixed my pm’s with my am’s and set it for evening instead of morning. I’m an early bird not a night one – this was so not what I intended.
- Setting up @TELEDALincoln has exposed my poor understanding of how Twitter works – with a single account you can get way with it – with two there’s no where to hide – and I’m still struggling with the synergies between the two.
I thought if I made my own mistakes public, it might make colleagues smile – or maybe raise their eyebrows in despair. Learning online is less about the technology and more about the learning it generates. This is why reflection is key to the TELEDA experience and I know most of these errors are largely of the ‘more haste less speed’ variety. There’s been a few TELEDA hiccups this week, including Blackboard going down on Tuesday, which I knew about and maybe others which I don’t. I hope everyone has survived the first week more or less digitally baptised but unscathed. Here’s looking forward to Week Two.
image from http://knight.stanford.edu/life-fellow/2014/15-social-media-tips-and-tools-for-journalists/