the end of section One

At this initial level I feel rather confused. The UELPlus is still unknown to me. The first stage of activities brough about some ice-breaking between the members and we feel a bit more encouraged by each other. We come from very different fields and have very different skills. This makes me feel relaxed since I know not all of us are specialists in e-technologies. We have established 3 models of online courses after Mason (1998) and we all agreed that ATM402 is an integrated model. I have learnt a lot about blogging as such in teaching, this is my special interest on this course and I am pleased we started from this activity and it is embedded on the course! I did not know that blogging has so many hidden problems, like privacy issue, institutional regulations, and design constraints. I am afraid blogging on my planned project cannot be open to the public as at the UEl we have to use the internal blog (at the moment on WebCt). In this section I had an opportunity to articulate my own ideas for e-innovation in my teaching practice. The template, although tedious, helped to ground my thoughts and observe how much I have to prepare and study to complete my goals. I will definitely try to implement blogging in my own context, but also ice-breaking activity to launch the exchange of views among the students. This activity serves perfectly face-to-face learning. Particulary valuable in my own context is the adaptation of blogging for foreign students. I am helping to unify the Erasmus students who come from different countries of Europe, I think blogging could be a great tool of informal communication for them, idealy prolonged beyond staying at the UEL. But here, again, issues of copyright and privacy can make a problem. In regard to this last problem, I want to explore the area of blogging standards and UEL regulations. I am going to contact the School of Distance and E-Learning to find out more about this. The other skill I would like to acquire is learning how to use the internally embedded blog myself. I don't know how to so it yet, but I am going to consult the ATM402 tutor. I am also going to create my own archive of sources which I can use on this module.