Getting Acquainted Posting

This week assignment required that we post our two-part of Getting Acquainted Posting for the online orientation course designed in EDUC 6135: Distance Learning course.

Part 1

Title: Mrs
Surname: Jita
Name: Thuthukile
E-mail: Thuthukile.jita@waldenu.edu
Skype: thuthukilejita1
Office hours: 7:45 – 16:30

Office Building: Sasol Library, Level 3, Room 337
The URL: http://onlineeffectivestrategies.blogspot.com/

Description:

During my spare time, I like to read biographies of well-known people such as Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton etc. These books usually give background details about a person’s history, which is always interesting to explore and relate to present day circumstances. I usually share what I have read with my family. At work I use The technology toolbelt for teaching as my first source of knowledge on technology tools.  I often recommend it to new staff members in our e-learning unit as a good start-up kit for any person who is new into with the field of technology.  For more information and for my further reading, I like “The Professor’s Guide to Taming Technology: Leveraging Digital Media, Web 2.0, and more for learning”.

The garden I helped to cultivate in my village house in the Eastern Cape

On TV, I enjoy watching reality shows, singing and dancing shows such as IDOLS, Gospel Alive, MTV, not that I can even sing along but watching people singing is good for the soul. It is always interesting to see people give it their all in the name of excellence in such dancing shows as “You think you can dance”. As a youngster, I did “Ballroom and Latin American” dance but never went further than local competitions. I still dance for fun though. Gardening (Figure 1: The garden I helped to cultivate in my village house in the Eastern Cape) is the one activity I also like, because it brings me closer to nature, and serves as a décor for the house and a source of food.

The beach in Durban during the summer holidays

I like travelling during holidays, mostly between three provinces, viz. Gauteng province (Johannesburg, Vereeniging and Pretoria); KwaZulu-Natal (Durban) and the Eastern Cape (Tsolo). We often visit my mother-in-law who lives in Vereeniging and from time to time we go shopping  in one of South Africa’s big city, Johannesburg where traffic in unbearable. I once took 3 hours to drive between Pretoria and Johannesburg – a trip that normally takes about 1hour and 20 minutes. Durban in KwaZulu-Natal is a popular coastal city, which we visit almost every summer holidays in December to play and swim in the sea. I grew-up in Durban and my family still lives there. We also love travelling to the Eastern Cape where my husband originates from, which is also my mother’s place of origin.  Visiting this part of the country connects my children with distant family members and they get an opportunity to learn about family history through story-telling, observing and participating in the community activities. We also perform all our cultural ritual in the Eastern Cape. When I am in the Eastern Cape, I feel like a real African woman which is captured in the way I dress and engage in the activities that other village woman perform such as cooking, plowing and helping other families in need. During the school holidays, we visit home to connect with other people who either remain in the village to take care of farming or others who also return to the village for holidays. Another aspect of the village life that I enjoy is doing a lot of walking which keep people healthy. In the pictures below I was walking with my children to a neighboring village. I love the village lifestyle!

My son drinking traditional bear

Walking in the village

 Part II

The main purpose of this course is to prepare you as a student to get ready for your future online courses, with the main goals focusing on technology skills, attributes of an online learner and resources for online learning. This course offers complete online training that is necessary to reduce student confusion and frustration in all the upcoming courses in the online program.  As a student you can assist the facilitator to achieve the purpose of the course by reviewing the course goals.  As you review the course performance goals and outcome, think about both the negative and positive impact the course goals might have on your studies. The course is structured so as to “be accountable to the goals, be at least as effective as alternative approaches and have a positive impact” (Simonson et al, 2012, p.361). Pointing out negatives would assist the facilitator to work towards reducing any negative impact the course might have on your studies. Begin by writing your own performance goals. Where would you apply the knowledge and skills learned in the course?

Fish & Wickersham (2009) posit that “meaningful interaction that motivates students to think critically is dependent upon effective course content presentation” (p.280). For an instructor/facilitator of the course to be able to create an environment that stimulates and encourages active learning, he or she would need to know the learning styles of students so that information can be presented in ways that are useful to all learning styles (Smith, 2008, p.9). By the end of the week, please complete the Vark learning styles inventory (http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire) and submit the feedback on learning styles with your own course goals and the context in which your goals will be applicable in the real-world.

References

Fish, W. W., & Wickersham, L. E. (2009). Best practices for online instructors: Reminders. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 10(3), 279-284. Retrieved from the Walden Library using the Education Research Complete database.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th Ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.

Smith, R.M. (2008). Conquering the Content: a step-by-step guide to online course design. San Francisco, CA. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.