This week my focus has been developing a virtual presence in the online course environment. \u00a0In my face to face classroom on a Monday morning I can look across the tired faces and know I had better ramp up my excitement if I expect my students to get excited about what we are learning. \u00a0In my face to face classroom at a glance I can see that \u201cJonny\u201d \u00a0is lost but does not want anyone else to know. \u00a0How do I take 17 years of \u00a0\u201cTeacher Sense\u201d and evolve into a Virtual \u201cTeacher Sense\u201d?<\/p>\n
Through my course work this week in \u201cToday\u2019s Online Teacher<\/a>\u201d (offered free\u00a0on\u00a0The Canvas Network<\/a>\u00a0taught by the people at\u00a0blendedschools.net<\/a>\u00a0) that I introduced you all to in my first\u00a0\u201cJOT\u201d post<\/a>\u00a0I have learned a lot about how a teacher may increase their presence in the online classroom. \u00a0Virtual Presence happens in three modes, the social, the cognitive, and the teacher. \u00a0I find all three of these modes helpful in creating the virtual teacher sense I find missing when I jump into the online world.<\/p>\n The Social presence is exactly what it sounds like. \u00a0Get a community together much like we have done here in the DEN. \u00a0This means a lot of work in the beginning \u00a0getting to know each other. This can be done with\u00a0icebreaker activities<\/a>\u00a0like sharing \u201cfun facts\u201d in a survey. \u00a0I just recently had my webdesign students create an\u00a0about.me<\/a>\u00a0page. \u00a0I asked them to only use a background picture and a symbolic name. \u00a0I wanted the name and picture to represent who they were at a glance.<\/p>\n The cognitive presence is where the instructor and hopefully the other class mates finds out how we all lean best in this virtual environment. This can be done with a\u00a0survey<\/a>\u00a0or \u00a0essay assignment like \u201cWhat have I learned about myself as a \u2018learner\u2019 over the past x years of my education?\u201d \u00a0This information is useful in designing learning activities and when providing academic support.<\/p>\n The teacher presence occurs at two stages. \u00a0The first stage is pre-course. \u00a0In this stage the teacher sets up the expectations for the course. \u00a0Such as course expectations document. \u00a0In \u00a0\u201cToday\u2019s Online Teacher<\/a>\u201d I was asked to make one and I was able to come up with a\u00a0\u00a0first draft<\/a>. \u00a0Feel free to use it and make some suggestions for me.\u00a0 \u00a0The second stage comes in monitoring the students during the course. \u00a0I had interesting\u00a0discussion<\/a>\u00a0with two of my class mates \u00a0(Daniel and Amy) about virtual attendance and late work submission. \u00a0How do you deal with sick students? \u00a0I think I needs some more time on that one, but I will post my thoughts on that later.<\/p>\n So all in all I have a start to evolving my \u201cVirtual Teacher Sense\u201d but from what I can tell so far I need to get a lot of contact with students to replace that single Monday morning look around the room. \u00a0I need to make sure I have enough contact time with them individually and as a group to evolve my \u201cteacher sense\u201d into a \u201cvirtual teacher sense\u201d. \u00a0It took my 17 years to get teacher sense I have now so expecting this to happen without experience is not realistic. I am reaching out to you all my PLN (Personal Learning Network) for help in this. \u00a0If you teach online what is your process? How do you develop that connection with kids virtually?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week my focus has been developing a virtual presence in the online course environment. \u00a0In my face to face classroom on a Monday morning I can look across the tired faces and know I had better ramp up my excitement if I expect my students to get excited about what we are learning. \u00a0In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/49"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}