First Week

I designed the opening week activities below while in Collaborative Communities in E-Learning. The activities would be for an Online World History class with eleventh graders from the five high schools in my school district. Moodle will be the CMS and forum discussions would be a prominent part of the class. We would start class with an introduction forum, before which I would send all students a welcome e mail.

Introduction forum prompt:

Describe the person, who must be dead, from history whom you would most like to meet and why. In this same post post introduce yourself to the class, including what high school you attend and your reason for choosing this online course.

To create your post hit the reply button. Changing the subject line will make your post more personal. When finished hit the "post to forum" button.

Participation requirements can be summarized as 1-2-3: one primary post, your main response to the prompt; responses to at least two class mates; and, additional responses throughout the week that happen on at least three days.

My Response to the introduction forum prompt:

I am excited to begin teaching this class because I love history and I am excited about how working online will allow students to express their own interpretations of the past. In addition to this class, I am teaching AP European History at Anoka High School this trimester.

If I could travel in time and speak all languages ever known, I would love to chat with Catherine the Great of Russia. Russian History has always fascinated me. I grew up during the 80s, at the end of the Cold War, and the US rivalry with Russia was a big deal. Catherine was a contradiction, an enlightened person who was also an absolute ruler; a woman who supported free thinking and also crushed a rebellion of starving peasants. I wonder what she was thinking, and I'd like to find out. With whom would you like to chat?

Welcome E Mail

Welcome to Online Global Studies, a fun and exciting class where students will create knowledge! My name is Eric Beckman and teach social studies at Anoka High School. I have been teaching tenth and eleventh grade history classes at Anoka for sixteen years, and I am looking forward to teaching Global Studies online for the first time.

All of the work in the brand new class will be completed online. Get started learning how this works by checking out the class Moodle site here. You will need to enroll in the class using the word "Dynasty". Even before school starts on September 3 you can started Module 0, which is all about the online tools that we will use. The first step will be to introduce yourself

Please reply to this e mail so that I know that you have received it. We will be using e mail to communicate, so it is important that you get used to using your AHapps gmail account. To help me keep track of all of my classes please use Global Studies in the subject line.

I'm looking forward to meeting all of you online!

All the best,

Mr B

Reflection: Much of the language on this page is revised from the first week in Online Politics and Law in the fall of 2012 and from online assignments in my AP European History class. I have learned that not only is clarity important, but it also must be very clear. In a blog post during Collaborative Communities in E-Learning, I reflected on the various reasons the Politics and Law got off to a slow start, and I have been thinking about ways to do it better next time. This page is the fruit of that thinking.