Week 1 – Introduction

Format

  • Online: All the activities for this week are located on the web.
  • Asynchronous: There is no component for this week that requires to connect in real time with colleagues or the instructor.

Overview

This week is intended for everyone to get familiar with the format of the course, understand the underlying guidelines and principles, and share your current level of experience with teaching, social media, and web 2.0 technologies.

Objectives

At the end of this week, you should be able to determine if the format and workload of this course will be a good fit for you.

Your action items

1. Watch this short course introduction.

2. Get yourself familiar with the course syllabus. Note that the syllabus still needs to be finalized, and your input is required to make it work for you throughout the semester. It will be frozen during our first class meeting on September 10.

3. If you don’t already have a regular Gmail email address, you should get one. We will be using a variety of Google tools during the semester, and this is a good time to start fresh with an email address that you can use professionally (use an address you would feel comfortable putting on your resume). Your University of Delaware Google Apps account will not allow you to use all the tools we will use during the semester, so you really need another one.

4. Fill out this short survey about your current level of experience with teaching, social media, and web 2.0 technologies.

5. FERPA and web 2.0 spaces.

5.1 Read this blog post by Mark Guzdial, professor, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, titled No More Swikis: End of the Constructionist Web at Georgia Tech.

5.2.Read the information included on the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) page. This course will require a level of openness that goes beyond the language of FERPA, and I will require you to make a personal and public FERPA statement, allowing for the materials you create for this course to be made available online for at least the length of the fall 2012 semester. If you are not comfortable with this clause, please contact me as soon as possible.

5.3 Answer the following question: How concerned are you about students’ privacy in Web 2.0 learning spaces such as wikis, blogs, and social media? Submit your answer in Canvas.

More to explore

Check our Diigo group and look for the week01 tag (there might not be additional resources at this time, but you can create an account and ask to be added to the group).