Here are some snippets from the discussion postings for the Discussion thread: Summarize: What’s in your toolkit?
Nov 4, 2014
I tried a total of 3 tools–2 successfully and 1 as a total fail. The first I tried was Etherpad. xxx and I had fun playing around with different features–including the time aspect that lets you “back to the future” your document… Next, xxx and I tried Google moderator. I was particularly attracted to this tool because it offers a chance to get student feedback on the progression of a course. In face-to-face classrooms, I often have a quarter term survey–an anonymous, informal survey that asks students what they like, what they need more of, and how they feel the course is progressing. Google moderator allows this kind of student feedback by allowing participants to ask questions and then “vote” on them.
Nov. 10th
… I’ve also been thinking for some time now about having my online students create their formal essays in Google Docs. This would replace my current system, which is asking students to upload their essays (for peer review, for my review) as .doc or .docx file submissions in Sakai. Again, sharing files seems sort of clunky to me now, knowing that cloud-based options are available. One reason I’ve hesitated to switch to Google Docs, though, is that I was worried about writers “resolving” their reviewers’ comments before I had a chance to view them and give the reviewers credit for their peer review work. But I’ve done some testing in Google Docs, and it looks like there will be simple ways to ensure that I can view the peer reviewers’ comments as the writers work on their documents.
Nov. 10th
I really liked the way these tools were presented in this unit, especially the page that mapped teaching goals to online tools for various moments in the course progression. It really helped me envision how I could pull the whole course together.
I set up a pre-course web-based survey linked through my Canvas practice course, which will be useful for getting a sense of students’ writing background, their expectations for the course, their knowledge of and access to technology and their experience with online courses. I expect to use this as a way to assess where students are at not just at the beginning of the course but at significant points throughout the semester to see how they self-assess and how they are feeling about the course.
Nov 10th
I focused the chat I had with xxx on potentially using diigo (Links to an external site.) as a way to collect and curate online primary sources for my students. I’m interested in theming my E110 class around Social Media/Social Justice, and in doing so the class will look at several short pieces across social media sites (YouTube, tumblr, facebook, twitter, etc).
