The New Toy =)

I was thrilled when Dee introduced “Schoology” in her presentation. Schoology is a Learning Management System (LMS) and a social network for sharing academic content. It looks like something similar to the most popular Facebook minus the distraction. Feel like starting up one soon…

I enjoyed Dee’s presentation on Teaching and Learning with Internet: Pedagogical strategies, Activities, Web Resources 2.0. She started with the definition on pedagogy (a conscious act designed to enhance learning), strategy (the ways to be carried out in order to achieve or reach the goal) and pedagogical strategy (the instructional designs applied in the teaching and learning). Some popular pedagogical strategies are behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism and social constructivism and now we have an emerging theory which is connecticism (Siemens & Downes, 2006). “There is no single pedagogy that provides absolute success for all students”. Therefore, teachers ought to be equipped with a sound knowledge of the pedagogical strategies in order to be able to choose the suitable strategy to be apply in a particular lesson to achieve the intended learning outcome.

To ensure effective E-Learning, there are 7 principles of good practices given by Gamson:

1. Encouraging contacts
   
2. Develop cooperation
   
3. Use active learning techniques
   
4. Prompt feedback
   
5. Emphasize time
   
6. Communicates high expectations
   
7. Respect diverse talents/ ways of learning

Starting and sustaining an E-learning environment will require extra effort than having lessons in school only. When it comes to the Internet (which is full of fun and excitement and distraction), we need to have something in our site that will attract the students to constantly visiting and the teacher’s availability is also very important as students will expect to receive comments and response ‘immediately’. All these will require the teacher to constantly check on the T&L site. Besides, the task given should be able to cater to the ability of all students to reduce frustration. As what had been quoted by Dee,

“What pedagogical principles can and/or should inform and guide online learning?”

“The best principle is one where the student is driven by tasks, problems and engages with the content and this is how the learning happens.”

When the students have the passion to learn, spontaneously, they will enquire more and get themselves engaged and involved in the teaching and learning process.