Week 4: Final Project

This week was mostly used for completing our final project and finishing up things that we were behind on. Almost everything was pushed back to Monday which was nice because I was feeling a little bit over whelmed with all that we had to do.

My final project was about the camera and how it has evolved over its life time. The camera is used in so many different ways from personal to medical uses. I talked about the history of the camera and how over one hundred years ago it took almost eight hours for a picture to be taken but now it only takes a second and you can instantly see your picture. I interviewed a friend of mine who took her love for photography and made a career out of it in broad cast journalism. She uses a camera everyday to document important moments in our society and share them with the world. I was happy that you gave us the freedom to choose what kind of genre we wanted to do for our final project. It helps us to become more creative and veer away from the normal class work.

Moving on to what I thought about the class as a whole. I really honestly enjoyed this class, I am personally someone that is more a math and science kind of person. I would rather be doing math homework then writing a paper. However in this class we talked about things that related to our day to day lives. We did a lot of dissecting of social networking sites which I thought was great because we were able to get behind the scene of that whole new craze. Learning about online dating was also a favorite of mine. I was totally against it at the beginning of this class, I thought that it was creepy and all the people on it were up to no good. Then I was able to see that a lot of older, middle aged people do have a hard time finding love and sometimes they have to take different avenues to get there. I would have to say as a whole the topics that Joyce chose were excellent.

These four weeks flew by but I feel that I have learned a lot from it. I really only have positive things to say about this class and I will definitely be referring my friends to take this class. Its was almost like a little break from the repetitive four test classes. So I would like to thank you Joyce for a wonderful four weeks. :)

Just a little something to make you smile :)

 (god I'm so corny)

Week 3: Online Classes

This week our readings were mainly studies that were done concerning online learning compared to face-to-face learning. The first article that we read was "Asynchronous Online Discussions". Asynchronous learning is a student-centered teaching method that is based on the constructivist theory that emphasizes the importance of peer-to-peer interactions. I think that this class is heavily based on this type of learning. This is my first online class and I personally have found it to be very successful at having me learn the material. Joyce gives us an article to read or video to watch and we as a class take that and ask our own questions and comment on things that we felt to be important. I would definitely say that this class is student run and I feel that it is almost better that way. It makes us students think a different way they the traditional read the book and take four tests. The article defines computer conferencing as: "a group that communications medium enabling groups of people to exchange ideas and opinions and to share information resources." Jeffery Mason made a good point that this definition relates 100 percent to this class and could be the definition of our discussion board. We find out in the article that the results of this study indicate that online discussions do improve students' perceived learning. I would have to agree with that in terms of this class. 


The second article that we read was "Examining Social Presence in Online Courses in Relation to Students' Perceived Learning and Satisfaction". This study had three main hypothesis'


a. Students’ perceptions of social presence in online courses are related to their perceived learning and satisfaction with their instructor.

b. Students’ perceptions of social presence in online courses are a predictor of their perceived learning.

c. Course activities perceived by students as having the highest level of social presence also have high levels of students' perceived learning.


I feel as though many of these hypothesis are somewhat common sense. For example with hypothesis A, if a student feels as though they are positively socially active in a class they will most likely learn more and be satisfied with there teacher. Most students have to feel comfortable with there teacher in order for them to participate in class. So I can definitely see the correlation between learning and there satisfaction with their teacher. I hope that that's what was meant by these hypothesis'. I was having a hard time understand really what they were trying to say. I didn't think that this article was as useful as the last one but I can see the relation  with the two. 


Finally the last article that we read was about E-zines, magazines that are available online. The article talked comic books that have e-zines online. I couldn't really relate to the comic books so while I was reading this article I was thinking about the People magazine website. E-zines allow there fans to contribute or comment on the site giving them the feeling that they are more part of the community. Joel stated "The community feeling is what these sites want because loyalty is an inherent quality within a community. The more the site provides users with a sense of community the more loyal they will be to that site." These sites also allow fans to participate in surveys or polls that ultimately give beneficial feed back to the sites. Soon I think that we will see almost all magazines become available online if they haven't already. 

People know have the ability to read the actual magazine online!