Independent+Project

media type="custom" key="9269586"Glogster

Based on the information in my article, I am interested in using widgets and other online circuits to engage an online learning community. I would set up a glogster, and a wiki. The main source of interaction would be a class blog where students could leave comments and suggestions for one another. Through personal narratives in their posts that relate to the subject of the class, students would be able to "get to know one another" even though they would not be physically in the same place. In the article this helped to create a sense of connectedness between the students, and also between the subject matter and the students.

Unfortunately, when I put this "into action" I ended up facing a few obstacles. One, many of my students lacked internet access. When they were able to get on, they were focused solely on the academic portion using APEX because that was the only requirement in their other classes. Another was engaging a rather apathetic student body in a subject in which they were uninterested. The main difference between my class, and the class in the article, was that the students in the article CHOSE to take the class and wanted to learn the second language. In my class, students were asked to opt into the online class to lower the number of students on my roster (the number of in-class enrollment was over 50.) or were placed there because they were going to leave the school on pregnancy leave. It seemed to be the "ticket out of school" rather than a new way to learn a language.