Asynchronous Vs Synchronous Learning- A "First World" Option

My breakdown of this “First World” option of E-Learning:

Benefits:

• Saves space. Many schools and classrooms are over impacted. With Elearning or Online Learning, more people can take advantage of education and not be limited by space issues or constraints. 
• Students can participate in the class in the comfort of their chosen surroundings, i.e. library, coffee shop, home in pajamas, etc.
• Students can take a class or a whole program from a school that is located anywhere in the nation. This opens wide a wealth of opportunity and choices.
• The learning materials for the class are often of a technology nature, saving money on physical books, and using resources that can be reviewed over and over unlike a one time given lecture.
• In an Asynchronous class students can move at their own pace.

Draw Backs:

• Asynchronous learning can lend itself too easily to procrastination and therefore stress induced learning for those that are not as personally motivated or who are already extremely busy.
• With Synchronous Learning everyone sees your immediate work (when you type) which does not give you an opportunity to make corrections, i.e. spelling or grammar.  There is also little or no time to process information because an immediate response is expected.
• There is little to no interaction with other class members and never personal relationship building with classmates or the professor.
• Discussions online take much longer than communicating face to face, therefore professors and students are not able to cover nearly as much content in the same amount of time online as you can face to face.  In fact Ned Kock who wrote ‘Media Richness or Media Naturalness? The Evolution of Our Biological Communication Apparatus And It’s Influence On Our Behavior Toward E-Communication Tools’ estimates that “an exchange of 600 words requires about 6  minutes for complex group tasks in face-to-face settings, while exchanging the same number of words over email or chat would take approximately one hour.” 

I suppose I am “old school” as I still would much prefer the face-to-face version of learning, mostly for the personal interaction and real time instruction and assistance. But after review of a few articles reporting the benefits and the concerns of Asynchronous and Synchronous learning, I definitely see the wisdom in finding a “blended” format.  That sounds like a copout perhaps but, while I truly find both options intriguing and somewhat beneficial, I know I need the discipline of having to submit work by deadlines but I also like the idea of working at my own pace to take in the content.  

Blog #4- App Review

The Sitch on Skitch

Being that I am new to most of these apps I am speaking as a novice.  But I have been playing with Skitch since we learned of it in class and I love it!  There have been many times that I wished I could save a portion of an image on a website and Skitch enables you to do it so easily. And I’ve also wanted to learn how people make annotations on pictures and images for purposes of direction and/or instruction and to literally point things out.  Now I am able to do that very thing.

Features:

• It is user friendly
• All the buttons for features are visible on the screen surrounding your picture so you don’t have to go back and forth
• Many font choices, sizes, and colors
• Can share the screenshot URL as a direct image URL, HTML, HTML thumbnails, or forum code.
• Can make multiple copies of the screenshot and “wipe” each to make changes
• Saves right into Evernote
• Best part… it is compatible with Mac so I can use it on my computer as well as the IPAD! 

Application for Education:

I can see how easily this could be applied in the classroom for live instruction, in making handouts, for use in a video or virtual instruction such as Prezi, etc.  It is a very intuitive app, which makes it easy to get going and begin using right away. Being that you can save the image once and make multiple copies, you can easily make minor changes each time to show progressive points on that same image. The features, like colors and sizes, are simple and therefore more noticeable.

There are so many ways I could have used this in my music teaching days. I could have scanned a sheet of music and pointed out the lines on the staff that each part is singing, made note of the dynamics as they are written, and highlight Codas, just to name a few. There are so many wonderfully practical ways to apply this app to teaching!

Blog Entry #3 - Flipping Out Over The Flipped Classroom

Flipping Class

I love that with the Flipped Classroom idea the class time becomes a place for students to process and interact to put that knowledge to practical use rather than it being just a lecture hall of sorts. As stated in the Flipped Class Manifest, “…students become active learners rather than receptacles of information”. Also fantastic is the way in which this Flipped Classroom allows the class time to be used for asking direct questions of the teacher and receiving more one on one instruction after the students have already familiarized themselves with the content.

If feel the most advantageous outcome of this model of teaching is any student who needs can watch the video over and over again until they really feel they have it. Others who were able to grasp the information the first time do not have their time wasted hearing it repeated and they may move on to the next project. It is quite practical as well in enabling students who must miss class to be able to keep up.

Mary Beth Hertz points out in her blog that these are not video games as people perceive videos. The video made for the Flipped Classroom is “a mixture of direct instruction and constructivism”.  As the Flipped Manifest indicates, teachers cannot expect to create a video on a subject one time and use that for all time.  The effectiveness of that video will change as quickly as all the rest of technology.  I’m sure that teachers using this method will find that they need to “update” and make changes often to make it fresh but we are learning in this class just how many amazing resources there are out there to allow teachers to be current and find new tools of information that will enable them to make those changes quickly.  Mary Beth Hertz also makes the point that “videos used in the flipped classroom model must include a variety of approaches in the same way a face-to-face lesson would”.  Again, there are a vast variety of resources, methods, and tools of technology that can help us to make this happen.

In support of these ideals I have to say this is meeting the kids right where they are at today.  While the videos, etc., are instructional, the format is one that they are not only used to but are grasping onto faster than any of us.  It is time that we catch up and make our instruction relevant for today but we must also keep teaching our kids to be responsible learners.  As the Manifest states, “We are actively transferring the responsibility and ownership of learning from the teacher to the students in a Flipped Classroom.”

One final thought from someone who has not taught in a classroom in 16 years. As I was reading these articles and reflecting on how I might put this into use if I was still teaching today I realized…I was doing the Flipped Classroom model 20 years ago. I was a music teacher and I while I taught my choirs and ensembles to read music in class, I also made recordings of our music, often with my voice dubbed over the top singing their part. (yes this did take HOURS of my own time outside the classroom, as did making 68 copies.  With the technology tools of today it would probably take me half the time now).  I did this so they could learn their part on their own time as homework.  By doing this I was able to spend the class time focusing on the whole group and their blend, the dynamics of the music, all the nuances that make the piece beautiful rather than spending our whole hour plunking out individual notes on the piano.  This way we were also able to learn, perfect, and perform more.