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Actually it’s not over yet. We started a couple of weeks ago with some online introductory exercises through the course website for which we use Moodle. Some of the participants wondered why there was an online introduction but as I explained to them during the two day face to face part of the course this was a way of giving them the experience of using online tools before we met. It seems that this needs to be emphasised more so that its purpose is clearer.
There were 12 participants in the end after a couple of cancellations. The face to face part of the course was an opportunity to see pedagogical examples of the main Web 2.0 tools in use and to try them out on a practical basis. So every participant had an opportunity to start a blog, produce a part of a podcast and edit a wiki. There was also a lightening introduction to social bookmarking, personal webpages and social networking using Ning as an example. It was especially the pedagogical examples which inspired participants to think in concrete terms how they could apply some of these tools in their own teaching.
It was interesting that a couple of them started thinking in terms of how to disseminate the ideas to colleagues rather than looking at the design of a specific teaching module. This is also a good result for the project because we are looking at having a multiplier effect.
We had used an adaptation of the LOTI lesson plan as inspiration for planning. This is a form to be filled in and our participants suggested that it should be a checklist rather than a form and being familiar with the pressure of full time teaching I can understand completely why this would be a more useful approach.
So now the participants have returned home to work on their teaching plans and try them out. We will be keeping in contact over the next five weeks or so and will meet one last time for a mini-online conference using one of the synchronous meeting tools we used to get in contact with Niels Damgaard in Oslo and Karin H