Online Tutoring - Reflections on week one

Goals
The purpose of this week has been to meet some of the online tutoring group - the participant learners - the coverts, the converts and those in between, as well as the moderators.

Then I wanted to know what was entailed in supporting students as an online Tutor. Getting a better understanding how students communicate and learn today. So what better way to know than to be a learner in a VLE. I can see that to be proficient, will mean knowing the tools and the environments, I will need to know which tools work best in which situations. This means a lot of initial time investment e.g. this week alone, I spent hours discovering Blogs, Flickr, Delicious and Twitter. I have visited a lot of blog sites - been amazed!! These experiences have fed my imagination and I feel some new things will be possible. For example, I have long toyed with the notion of having an academic website i.e. one designed for me by a webmaster, where I could upload and store documents, and where people could visit and comment and read my material. Maybe a blog is a first step in that direction?

Frustrations.
I got a bit frustrated when I discovered that I wasn't able to chat. I had sent out invitations to chat but noticed that on my availability column I was seeing NO whereas others displayed YES. Well I had to get to YES. Patsy drew my attention to the browser and guess who hadn't Java installed ? This minor glitch has been sorted now and I have been throwing out invitations to chat to all and sundry - making up for lost time as it were.

I tend to get frustrated with unexplained abbreviations - though it hasn't been too bad in this course so far. Because there is a mix of experiences it is inevitable, I suppose, that I should come across those who are vastly more experienced in this métier than I am. That is good. What is less good is of course is the use of abbreviations. On my first seconds online I met f2f ('face-to-face') and VLE (Virual Learning Environment) and a couple of others as well which I couldn't work out. Of course I use some of them now myself, but abbreviations thrown in too freely, can throw a tyro like me. David Hopkins was very good on his blog, he used full expressions and then in brackets the abbreviations - e.g. LMS's, CMSs. Very user friendly. Though I still haven't worked out how to post a comment on his blog. Word Press ask for username and password - I assumed it meant mine but when I give them it very unkindly refuses me entry.

Activities.
I have been reading quite a lot online: answers to the various tasks such as icebreaking, benefits of e learning. Also have been reading blogs and discovered that many are starters like myself. Anyway I have started to get to know the people I will be working with. I decided to try out as much as possible. Get launched into it, not too not to engage in too much face-to-face ( f2f) - Virual Learning Environment (VLE) comparisons. I set up my Blog, Flickr and began to Twitter. Had a couple of very short chats. Already I have learned quite a bit about social software tools. But it will take quite a bit of time and practice to really get behind their scope and flexibility.