Week 3

On Tuesday we had two guest speakers from Manitoba education. Donald and Shannon both work in the department of web based courses. From going to high school in a small rural community I knew that web based courses existed. I never took a web based course but they were offered to us and my mom actually taught a web based agriculture course for a number of years. What I didn't know was how many courses there were available and how they were set up. Manitoba Education uses an online platform called Blackboard for all of their courses. There are 44 full courses that have been created on Blackboard that match Manitoba curriculum. That is another thing I didn't realize; that there is already a course full of content on Blackboard. I just assumed that the teacher would have to create the course themselves online. The one thing that Donald pointed out is that the course doesn't provide assessment assignments. The assessment is left up to each individual teacher. Using blackboard to teach a web based course is something that I would like to try at some point in my career.

The nice thing is, even if I don't get to teach an online course, I will still have the opportunity to use the course content that has been created on Blackboard. All courses on Blackboard are available to Manitoba Teachers upon request. Donald and Shannon mentioned a new trend in education known as blended learning. Blended learning combines the traditional face to face classroom practices with computer mediated activities. Some schools even don't require their student to go to school each day; however that is not legal in Manitoba public schools though. This is something that I would like to incorporate in my future classrooms. Where I have the odd assignment where my students have to log on to Blackboard and do it from there. The reason I think this would be beneficial for students is because of how many post secondary classes are taught this way. Most colleges and universities have their own platforms similar to Blackboard, whether it be Moodle or whatever else. I would say that around half of my post secondary course has required me to log onto these platforms to either get the class notes, submit assignments, etc. I think this would be a great skill for high school students to be familiar with as we prepare them for their future. It could even lead them to be confident enough to take online courses in the future. Which we are seeing more and more, as a option to further one's education.