Post #1- C&I 438 Web 2.0

Getting back into reading other people’s blogs can be overwhelming, but addictive at the same time! There is so much out there on distance learning. As I was reading blogs, I came across a blog by Chris Pearson that focused on Web 2.0. This caught my attention as I think using web2.0 tools in distance ed can be a great way to interact students-to-students, and students-to-instructor. There was a slide show embedded in Chris’s blog that better explained ‘web2.0’. First, I was very impressed by the idea of the use of ‘slideshare’ to post this slide show. Is this something I can do for a blog I create for my classes I teach? I was also intrigued by the slide show as it defined web 2.0… “Web 1.0 was commerce, Web 2.0 is people.” I think this is a great way to describe web 2.0 and also helps show the use the web can have in distance education. Having students interact is a great learning technique and web tools such as wikis, blogs, etc can allow for the ‘participatory web’ (as Chris defines it) to help facilitate learning.  For my online medical terminology course, I finally have an outline created for my summer course. When I first started creating my online course, I was told by another individual who previously taught the same course, that I could just ‘copy’ all of her materials. She taught using WebCT and having students take weekly quizzes- that was their only task- no interaction. I knew that I could take the easy way out and copy her materials, however, I knew that that was not the way I wanted to teach an all online medical terminology course. I have gathered some other discussion questions, activities, group projects, and smaller quizzes to have more interactions among the students. Then I read Gary Harriman’s blog which gave me another idea: Case Studies.
Gary discussed how case studies are often left out of distance ed courses, but can be a really great interactive learning tool. I can really see a connection between case studies and medical terminology. The case studies could be designed to show if students are really understanding the terminology they are reading with different medical cases. However, Gary wrote about case studies that appear to be designed with a bit more technology savvy programs than I am used to using (html and Java Script). However, I do think this is something I may look into for this online medical terminology course. Medical Terminology is like learning a foreign language. Repetition, repetition, repetition. This is where the interaction and fully utilizing tools of Web 2.0 could make my course my learner-friendly!

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