Internet Addiction

After having created this blog and participated in an online discussion forum, I find myself checking these two sites on a daily basis.

Does this make me an internet addict?

The popularity of the internet has created a big community of internet users.
Some students use the internet to the degree that it interferes with other aspects of their life (social and academic). Some colleges provide 24-hour internet services for the students.
Students in the college where I teach are always sitting quietly at their computer desks “studying”. They attend classes for twenty hours per week, but they are not allowed to leave the college between classes. The rest of the time is their own: they spend it searching the internet: chatting, playing games or reading news.

Can this big invention of internet turn ugly? Can students get addicted to internet? Is this addiction real?

If you use the internet daily, would this make you an internet addict? Try this test:http://www.netaddiction.com/resources/internet_addiction_test.htm

Online participation in course discussions

In the last couple of weeks I noticed that some of the students are adding their postings to old discussions just to fulfill the assessment criteria: I find this extremely disturbing, because I thought that participation is part of collaboration and the construction of knowledge and that “regular contributions to online discussions are integral to the determination that a student is keeping pace with the learner-centered activities and achieving the outcomes of the course.”

This makes me think whether participation should be assessed only for the quantity and quality of postings or is there another dimension that should be added which is a factor of time - timely participation is very important because the course was divided into weekly chunks that include activities that should be done during that period.

Would blocking a discussion thread be an option or would this hinder the continuity of the discussions? Should students work within a specific timeframe for participating in a discussion?

References
Edelstein, S. & Edwards, J. (2002). If You Build It, They Will Come: Building Learning Communities Through Threaded Discussions. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Volume V, Number I, Spring 2002. State University of West Georgia, Distance Education Center. Retrieved April 10, 2007 from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring51/edelstein51.html

Reflection on collaborative activities

The experiences in this course (EDU 5471) and the new knowledge motivate me to explore online pedagogy further in terms of collaborative activities and the technological tools used; and this will enable me to apply it in my own context of teaching interior design by assisting me in:

* Carefully designing the collaborative activities, taking into consideration the diverse cultures and backgrounds of students, and the sociability factor needed for the creation of the learning community.

* Assigning enough time to enable online collaboration when designing a course (which was great in this course).

* Deciding on the structure of the collaborative activity: instructor-controlled or student-controlled, while emphasizing a student-centered approach. (this course allowed for students' control over the activities as long as they fulfill a certain quantity and quality criteria).

This course is giving me the chance to discover the importance of the collaborative project-based activities, and how ‘teachers should support the learners in reflecting on the strategies for learning as well as what was learned’ (Schon, 1987. cited in Savery & Duffy, 1995, p.5)

References
Savery J. & Duffy Th. (1995). Problem based learning: An instructional model and its constructivist framework. Retrieved March 28, 2006, from http://crlt.indiana.edu/publications/duffy_publ6.pdf