Well, I guess this is where it all begins.  I am looking forward to being on the receiving end of education for a change. 

Not a totally good day of e-teaching, a faulty projector and downloaded youtube videos that decided not to play.

The big day has arrived, so I have had a go at the week one activities.  There are only a few contributions so far, so I have dived in in the hope that I am on the right track and that it will encourage others to dive in too.  The pace of contribution will probably quicken towards the end of the week as everyone consciously tries not to be identified with any of the characters in the case study!

I tried to buy an ebook reader today but Waterstones were out of stock of the model I chose, the assistant told me they had two on the stock system but they were both faulty customer returns...  I hope such a device will make referring to articles easier as I won't have to flick from session to session on the computer.

Having looked over all the case studies for week one, I find they appear to have more in common than not.  There is a general consensus that preparing the students in advance is key, to this I add that the staff need to be prepared well too.

It can be difficult to find somthing original to say once the threads have got underway, I guess this leads to some original thinking at times.

Week one of 'Introduction to digital environments for learning' is drawing to a close.  An interesting activity, and in many ways challenging as the different student types discussed had a lot in common, so it wasn't always easy to come up with something new.

Having found time to finish reading 'e-tivities' by Gilly Salmon this morning, I find that the last few pages of the book to be relevant to this exercise.  The book is divided in to two similar length parts, starting with an introduction to e-tivites and makes use of Gillys five-stage framework.  Part two concentrates on resources for practitioners and is divided down in to a number of digestable sections, each a couple of pages in length.  Many of the sections  look at issues raised in the course discussions such as: 'Promoting collaborative groups', 'on line emotions' and 'Patterns of participation'. The patterns of participation section is particularly relevant as it discusses the characteristics of most (if not all) of those partisipants studied, alongside a number of others that give a fuller picture of the social mechanics of discussion boards.

I found the book a challenging read so it has taken some time for me to complete it.  However the resources section makes this a worthwhile read for anyone looking at online learning from any perspective.

Salmon, G. (2002) e-tivities (the key to online learning). Abingdon: RoutledgeFalmer.