Putting Educational Innovations into Practice.

MERLOT 101 Online 2009: Week One Introductions and Post- Workshop discussion

Welcome all, near and far, to a special three-week version of MERLOT101 beginning March 2009. This online course will get newcomers started with MERLOT, help you discover its many features and show you how to build a Personal Collection of learning materials for teaching and learning.

Before entering the course content, let us begin by building our community.Please introduce yourself to the group. Tell us the discipline area that interests you, what kinds of learning materials you seek and ask any questions that you may have about MERLOT.

For participants with some background in MERLOT, welcome as well. Your objective for the workshop is to build a Personal Collection and to share it with our network. If all goes well, this course will have an international audience, so the potential to meet new colleagues and to learn about new resources should be greater than usual.

Please remember that throughout the course of these three weeks you will have access not only to your MERLOT team, but also the TLTG team and the MERLOT Africa Network.
Interaction with people who can help us get what we need is the heart and soul of MERLOT. So, let's get acquainted with each other and the course.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Laura Franklin on March 11, 2009 at 11:56am

Bienvenue à tous nos participants francophones. Le but de ce forum c'est de nous connaître, bien sûr, mais aussi de partager la grande richesse de notre site MERLOT. Je suis rédactrice de la collections langues depuis 2000, alors, au Web, ça fait longtemps. Je connais assez bien les autres collections aussi, alors n'hésitez pas à me poser des questions. J'aimerais bien que tout le monde sorte de cette expérience avec sa propre collection personelle d'outils, des parcours pédagogiques et des liens aux ressources de MERLOT.

Je travaille avec Professeur Moustapha Diack au Reseau Africain MERLOT. Nous préparons ensemble les Prix MANela pour le grand congrès e-learning Africa qui aura lieu au mois de mai. Visitons notre site MAN pour plus d'infos.

Mais pour maintenant, ayez la bonté de vous présenter ici et de nous dire vos objectifs pour ces trois semaines. Nous répondrons sous peu.

Cordialement,

Laura

Permalink Reply by Cindy Potteiger on March 12, 2009 at 6:33am

Greetings,
My name is Cindy Potteiger. I am the Instructional Technologist at Cuyahoga Community College (Tri- C) on the Metropolitan Campus in Cleveland, Ohio. As such I am interested in all discplines our faculty teach.(Liberal Arts, Nursing, Health Careers, Performing Arts)

I hoping to assist faculty in finding resources in MERLOT as well as teaching how to search effectively for themselves. I'm new to this position but previously worked for the College as the Distance Learning Center Director . I'm looking forward to participating in this workshop and hope to absorb all the knowledge I can.

Permalink Reply by Cathy Swift on March 12, 2009 at 1:45pm

Hi, Cindy. You are in the right place. In this session we hope you became more familar with how to find materials on MERLOT. That is the essential issue with your faculty members..making them realize that they don't have to "reinvent the wheel" with using technology in the classroom. You will particularly benefit from the third session in which Ray Purdom will demonstrate some of the other aspects of MERLOT that are helpful for faculty.

Permalink Reply by Moustapha Diack on March 13, 2009 at 3:42am

Hi, My name is Moustapha (Mous). I am a native of Senegal and live in Louisiana (in the United States since 1990). If you ask why Louisiana, my answer would be, New Orleans. New Orleans and Louisiana are considered the center of World Music, as Dakar is for Africa. I love musique, but certainly not as much as I do my daughters, my best friends.

I work at Southern University and teaches multimedia design and integration and evaluation of technologies for education. I am Director of the MERLOT Africa Network, a MERLOT outreach to extend its Community of Practices to Africa.

I wanted to welcome you to this excellent faculty development opportunity that focuses on best practices for using and contributing to the MERLOT Community and OER Repository
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Salut, Je m'appelle Moustapha (Mous). Je suis originaire du Sénégal et je vis maintenant en Louisiane (États-Unis depuis 1990). Si vous demandez pourquoi la Louisiane, ma réponse serait la Nouvelle-Orléans. La Nouvelle-Orléans et la Louisiane sont considérées comme le centre de la musique du monde, comme l'est de Dakar pour l'Afrique. J'adore la musique, peut etre pas autant que mes deux meilleurs amis, mes deux filles.

Je travaille à la Southern University et enseigne le design de multimédia et de l'intégration et l'évaluation des technologies de l'éducation. Je suis le directeur du Reaseau Africain MERLOT (RAM), qui est un pour étendre la Communauté de pratiques de MERLOT à l'Afrique.

Je tenais à vous accueillir à cette excellente opportunité de développement du corps professoral qui se concentre sur les meilleures pratiques pour l'utilisation des RELs, le control de qualite des RELs postes sur MERLOT

Permalink Reply by Moustapha Diack on March 13, 2009 at 3:52am

Hi Cindy, I agree with Cathy. This is an excellent opportunity to deploy eLearning in your institution. I certainly value the quality-control of resources provided by the MERLOT community. Basically, what differentiate us from Googl(ing)e for educational resources is the label of quality and the useful comments provided by users of the MERLOT collection. I am sure Cathy will elaborate on that during her next week session. Well, Iam looking forward to hearing more about your institution's attempt in deploying the MERLOT OER repository.

Permalink Reply by Laura Franklin on March 17, 2009 at 3:12pm

II am in Community College like you and I also am very involved in distance learning. My college's Extended Learning Institute offers hundreds of courses online. Recently, I have been teaching language online, which was a challenge with listening and speaking until MERLOT. I have a vast collection of videos, listening sites, pronunciation tools, verb conjugators and reference materials that my students use regularly.

In Nursing, I would like to recommend this Personal Collection of learning materials. Your faculty will like these:

http://healthsciences.merlot.org/teach.html

In Technical Allied Health, we have these:
http://www.merlot.org/merlot/materials.htm?category=297655

Providing materials with audio, video and graphic representations for our students really makes our subjects that much more accessible.

We are glad you are here with us for the next three weeks!

Permalink Reply by Tess Beebe Johnson on March 16, 2009 at 7:03am

I am Tess Beebe Johnson from East Tennessee State University. I am developing a course in Community Technology for the Social Work Department at ETSU. I am also interested in developing a certification program in various areas of technology for human service administrators, education professionals, etc.

I am using Merlot to build content in my course/s and to provide support and guidance to fellow educators who are using Merlot to develop online content for their courses in a variety of fields.

Permalink Reply by Laura Franklin on March 17, 2009 at 3:24pm

Hi Tess!

The Tennessee Board of Regents is one of MERLOT's institutional partners, as I am sure you probably are aware. You will be able to develop Personal Collections in MERLOT that will help support your classes and all the professional development activities in which you are involved. I single out these communities for your perusal:

MERLOT Pedagogy
MERLOT Faculty Development.

Enjoy the class and please share your finds here in VOICES!

Permalink Reply by TOURE MADINA on March 18, 2009 at 4:46am

J'ai eu la chance de participer au précédent atelier online. Malheureusement, j'ai été handicapé par la langue. Mon souhait est de pouvoir jouer toutes mes partitions à savoir :
1- faire connaître mon institution (en tant que chargée des relations extérieures de la Bibliothèque Universitaire Centrale)
2- développer mes capacités en recherche et méthodologie dans le cadre d'une préparation de thèse en histoire (sur la femme, les alliances, le pouvoir...): je suis associée en recherche au laboratoire d'histoire (LERHI)
3- faire profiter notre institution des ressources éducatives libres (RELs), notamment les revues et collections.

Permalink Reply by Laura Franklin on March 18, 2009 at 4:12pm

Dans l'avenir, nous comptons faire des ateliers 100% en francais, probablement avec la communaute RAM (Reseau Africain MERLOT). Moustapha en est le directeur. Ce matin, le Groupe TLT a enregistré l'atelier, alors vous allez pouvoir l'écouter au site TLT. Nous avons presque tout traduit, Moustapha et moi. Je suis sure que vous allez pouvoir le suivre.

Posez-nous des questions ici et envoyez-nous des méls.

Cordialement,

Laura

Permalink Reply by Cathy Swift on March 13, 2009 at 5:17pm

One thing we haven't mentioned during the webinar is the MERLOT International Conference. We will be holding it in San Jose, August 13-16. It is a wonderful opportunity to learn about new resources and technologies as well as network with people who are very interested in teaching and learning. You can find out more about the conference at: http://conference.merlot.org/2009/
We have closed the proposal submissions, but registration will be open in early April. Again, a great opportunity to interact with people from all disciplines, all interested in teaching and learning. There is a great energy to the conference and you would really enjoy it.

Permalink Reply by Moustapha Diack on March 15, 2009 at 11:56am

I agree with Cathy that the MERLOT International Conference, or MIC, is the annual meeting to attend if one is interested in networking with a Great Community and learn more about the best OER practices and integration OER. I strongly advise and support this Conference.
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Je suis d'accord avec Cathy que la Conférence internationale MERLOT, ou MIC, est la réunion annuelle à assister si l'on s'intéresse à la mise en réseau avec une grande communauté et d'apprendre davantage sur les meilleures pratiques et l'intégration REL et de MERLOT. Je conseil vivement cette conférence.