Reflect Often

Another great feature of working online is that you can look back on your digital trail. You can see yourself as others see you, and that self-assessment can help you identify both strengths and weaknesses to work on. [next]

Take a look at yourself. 




Additional comments:

One of the main reasons that I use blogs in my classes rather than discussion boards is because a blog creates a digital trail of learning for a particular class. By the time students reach Week 15 of a class, they have accumulated four months of work in their blog, and each week along the way, they have a chance to look back on what they have accomplished and reflect on that, as well as sharing in the learning of other students in the class.

Some students leave their blogs online at the end of a class, while others delete some or all of their blog posts; it's totally up to the students. You can see a directory of the student blogs from last semester here: Blog Directory. You can also see some specific types of blog post assignments at the Myth-Folklore course hub and the Indian Epics course hub (those course hubs are built with the Inoreader RSS feed reader, which I highly recommend... it beats Feedly hands down for RSS power users, which would include me, a hard-core RSS-a-holic).

In addition, for me, teaching online, self-reflection naturally leads to self-improvement much more easily than it ever did when I was teaching in the classroom. After a class session was over, I had no way to go back and re-experience that from the students' perspective. In the asynchronous world that makes both teaching and learning more visible, I have so many opportunities to review and improve. It helps me a lot as a teacher just as it does my students!


The image above is another one of the LatinLOLCats: Teipsum inspice. Take a look at yourself.

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