It’s amazing how much can suddenly emerge through one catalytic experience. It was our second gathering at TAG yesterday. A number of things came up for me, from the class, so I’ll stream through them here as a way to capture my thoughts.

First, I do not like the WebCT site or interface. I do not feel comfortable with it, I don’t find it friendly or inviting. It seems very cold and rigid. I have a hard time finding things, knowing where to look, knowing where to put things.

Second, although the WebCT site is supposed to function as a communication site, it doesn’t necessarily inform knowledge of what is going on in the class. There was an instruction about signing up to provide food for the classes that came in an email. I figured I would get it over with early and put my name, as best as I could figure out how to do that, onto the course calendar. I did not check to confirm that it was understood that I would bring food. That was another lesson. Always confirm understandings, do not assume everyone is looking in the same place at the same time, online. It turned out that class already had people bringing food. Why didn’t I know that? I often miss things, especially verbal content in the classroom. After spending an hour shopping and hauling food the class, I realized I had got it wrong. Very embarassing. Now I haven’t signed up for food at all, because I just don’t trust the system. Not rational, I know.

Third, when using a portal, like WebCT, it is important to make sure everyone knows where they are supposed to go for course assignments and coursework. Somehow, perhaps because I am unfamiliar with the site, I missed a whole part of the prep work for the class. I don’t know how this happened, and it makes me nervous about making sure I have all the pertinent information for the next class. Another embarassing moment. I think I would include a reminder notice, perhaps a couple of days before the class, especially when it has been a month since the last class and everyone is getting used to a new system of communication and resource access. It’s important for me to remember that I can’t assume everyone has knowledge that I take forgranted.

We had a couple of powerpoint presentations in class yesterday, and I’m adding these comments about Powerpoint because it has come up from a number of different directions. First, the powerpoint comes up and the presenter starts speaking about what is in the slides. The students start making notes and the presenter says, “I’ll have the presentation available online, so you don’t have to take notes.” First, is the presentation really online? After the second presentation yesterday, I went online to where I thought it would be, somewhere in the WebCT site. But I could not find it anywhere. Second, getting a powerpoint presentation is not a substitute for note taking. Yes, it is true, the student doesn’t have to copy, verbatim, the text on the slide. What the slide does not have on it is the actual comments made by the presenter, so if the student has not made notes of the comments, they may not have anyway of making sense of the slides after the presentation. It is helpful to have a printout of the powerpoint presentation, so notes can be made at the appropriate slide. I have a big problem with text slides in powerpoint. I suppose I am supposed to be able to take in the information by reading it from the slide, as the presenter reads it to me, but I find this an extremely limited application of the resource, one that tends to cause my eyes to glaze over the moment I see the slide of text. What I would wish for, what would help me, because I have such a dominant visual orientation, is that there was a visual, image or video used for that slide space. I’m not talking about clip art, or other manufactured visual products. I’m talking about something the presenter has created, to elaborate their point from a visual perspective. This leads me straight into my strong feelings about visual language and visual literacy in education.

Education spends the majority of it’s efforts to school the student to read, write and critically examine text based material. This makes sense, because a main objective of education is to create a text literate citizen. What I think is important now, as we move into digital spaces and digital media, is the education of the visually literate citizen is as important as text based literacy. I find educators have this cavalier attitude toward visual content, using whatever is at hand to add a decorative element to their text. I think this is a huge problem, that does a real disservice to a very powerful source of information, our visual reading of the world. I find powerpoint presentations to be the worst offenders, or the best exemplars, of this attitude.

Enough of that rant. I promise to use visual media for thoughtful visual representations that I have created myself, if at all possible.

That is enough for now.