About myself (Week 0)

My name is Julio Castro and I am an instructional designer at the University of Florida. I learned about this course from one of those alerts that I have set up in Google Alerts. I am ready to start developing an online class on how to teach online, and I want to see how this one has been set up. Although this is not the approach I will be using in my course, I found the method very interesting. It also happens to be that I have never taken an online class (I am a Gen X guy, all my formation happened in the classroom), and I thought this one would be the one I would choose to be the first one.

To me, the most important issue in teaching online is how to create engaging content that can keep the students interested in your course. I think another issue is the technology we want to use in our courses. How much is too much? Creating games is still expensive and time consuming, but there must other ways to design games that teach something and would not require that much money and time. Another issue I find fascinating, the fact the nowadays anybody can publish an online course. The technology is already here and it can be done cheaply and fast. I think online or e-learning will eventually go through the same process that books and music (and movies) went through: the self-publishing movement.

I think I can contribute from my experience designing online courses. But I also need to take the next step to becoming and online teacher or instructor. I love developing content for online courses, I have done that in the past when I taught courses at UF in a classroom setting. I also have a technology background since I have used web programming and computer programming for a long time. I am also trained in the use of development tools (software) extensively used in instructional design.

I think I would like to develop strong relationships with others in this course, learn more about them and maybe continue the chat and sharing of information beyond this class, maybe through other social media tools. I see this community morphing into a collaborative group in the future.

I don't consider this fear but mostly a lack of grit on my side. I am intended on overcoming this by catching up with the class and keeping up by taking small steps everyday to complete the activities and attend the live or recorded sessions when I can't attend. The feedback from others once my content is out there is what is going to be a challenge to me since I will not have the chance of meeting my fellow classmates personally, but I plan on following on any feedback received, make an analysis and identify the merits to the suggestions provided.