Activity 2 - Exploring the Uses of Telecommunications in Education

• PowerPoint Presentation on CourseCompass.Com - (Under Lectures/Telecollaboration).

• Lab Activity:   Today we will research several types of electronic communication and compare and contrast their features and their suitability for your particular teaching situations.

  As you complete the lab, consider how various telecommunication tools are used in Judi Harris's activity structures  and action sequences.

  Category A.  Email vs. ListServs

  Category B.  Bulletin Boards/Discussion Forums vs. Chat vs. Videoconferencing

  • Form a group with other students.

  • Each group will research one form of electronic communication in both sets A and B.  You need not visit each site listed under "resources," but do visit a sample of sites.  Feel free to add other relevant sites you locate.

  • Assign one person to be the facilitator, another to post your joint response to the Discussion Forum on CourseCompass.com, and another to report verbally on your findings to the class.  All members should participate in researching the answers.

  • Remember when posting your response to: use a descriptive label, e.g., e-mail, listserv, etc. and include the names of your team members.

Activity 3:  The UEN "Activities" Tool

The UEN Activities tool may be used to guide students to educationally appropriate web sites and to pose questions for them to answer.  A sample "Activity" is shown on my "My UEN" page: http://my.uen.org/57308. Teachers have created several activities (see: http://www.uen.org/activities/html/www_activities.html). 

Review the tutorial for using the "Activities" tool and also refer to the " Web Activity Menu" from within your "My UEN" activity's tool to design a practice activity for your students.  Be prepared to participate in a group discussion re: the intended use of this tool and creative uses of the tool.

NOTE:  You may post your Activity on your public "My UEN" page without selecting the "Publish" feature within the Activity tool.  Publish adds your activity to the UEN database so that other teachers can search for activities and access them.  If you do not wish to have your activity added to the database, but you do want to make it public so it could be used by your students, return to your "My UEN" page and use the "Edit" feature to make the activity public.  Then, you simply refer your students to your "My UEN" URL to view the activity.