BP10_118_Web 2.0_Responding to Peers' Posts

Sunday, November 8, 2009

BP7_2009112_researching_and_blogging_about_web_2.0_tools_ post_1

MERLOThttp://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm

Merlot is putting education innovations into practice! Find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials. Also at this site you are able to share advice and expertise about education with expert colleagues. You can also upload your own course material ideas for comment and feedback! They have discipline communities by subject area, which also makes this site very convenient.

According to John Whitmer (2009), the Director of California Virtual Campus, for California community colleges and other institutions of higher education across the country, administrators are being asked to do more with less, more than ever. Teachers and administrators are often facing increasing student demand to help people improve their position in this in this economic climate, or recover from layoff, but are receiving less resources.

Merlot also has a huge annual conference and if you cannot make it to the actual conference, they offer it online as well.

Some universities have seen the power of this annual conference and have actually started to bring students to the conference. University of Michigan (U of M) Professor Wong (2009) was able to bring students to the conference in 2009 due to a grant. U of M added students to the mix and remixed the team to focus on the deployment of good learning objects in gateway undergraduate courses on campus. They selected graduate students with tech savvy and domain expertise in these courses, and they became our key and fearless collaborators on the team. Through this teamwork, the cross-disciplinary MERLOT community of practice on campus has grown in 2009 to include chemistry, English and composition, foreign languages, mathematics, medicine, nursing education, physics, psychology, teacher education, and statistics.

I am planning to attend the 2010 Merlot Conference!

References

Whitmer, J. (2009). I’m looking forward to getting energized by MERLOT’s Creative and Collaborative Community. Retrieved November 7, 2009 from http://merlotconf.wordpress.com

Wong, V. (2009). MERLOT conference 2009 – San Jose: A team always wins – students as key collaborators. Retrieved November 7, 2009 from http://merlotconf.wordpress.com/tag/michigan/