About
I am a mom, a wife and a Vice Principal in Ottawa, Ontario. My current areas of professional learning include
- the brain and reading
- visual literacy
- social netlearning
- leading for change
shannon smith
… thinking about learning / learning about thinking …
Recent Posts
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April 5th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
I enjoyed your blog today. I am a university professor. I teach art education at the undergraduate and graduate level at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. I live in Plano, however. Plano is 30 miles west of Denton.
In any case, my research area is online learning. All of my undergraduate and graduate classes are online and I am constantly looking on the net, particularly amongst bloggers, for new ideas to improve the learning experiences and community of my online classes.
I am very passionate about online learning and I am trying many different ways to integrate a constructivist approach into my online classes. This is tough considering the university only provides us with Blackboard which has limitations for implementing a totally constructivist approach. Nevertheless, I try and I feel I am developing some first hand knowledge about what works for me and my students.
I have been teaching online for over eight years and I feel there has been a lot of trial an error. My favorite author these days on online learning is Rena Palloff. She has just come out with a revised edition of her book about building online learning communities. Are you familiar with her and her books?
I would love to correspond with you as you have the time. We seem to have the same viewpoint, even though we teach/learn different subjects.
Warmly,
Diane