Marsha West

Hi, I'm Marsha West - and I've been hanging around SCoPE since the old GEN days. (Good to see some friends here from that time, including Sylvia Currie and Nancy Riffer.)

I live in northwest Washington State on the Olympic Peninsula - with my husband Don and our two Irish Setters, Jack and Finn.

I've created some net courses and worked extensively as an online facilitator - primarily with PBS TeacherLine. Most of my work is oriented toward training others to be online facilitators, and I've written some courses that are designed to do that. I also belong to several online communities which deal with online facilitation. One of these is F.U.N. (Facilitators United Network) which is PBS TeacherLine's place where facilitators collaborate, problem solve, and come up with creative ideas for delivering online professional development courses for K12 teachers.

I'm looking forward to the discussions that will take place in this seminar. Things move so quickly in our field, and if you don't check in with groups like this, it's easy to get left behind..

Best regards,
Marsha

There are many wonderful resources here, but i was disappointed to discover so many dead links in the first set of resources above - "Comprehensive Websites about Best Practices."

I can open most of those below the list of the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education, but only a few in the bulleted list above it.

But there are so many - and so much there -- that it's almost too much to take in anyway.

Thanks so much for sharing them.

what great timing! I have just been virtually dragged onto Facebook by my family and friends -- it's the only way I can see the newest photo albums of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. But I'm a little taken aback by how much I see there - and how to make sure that not more of me is seen than I'm comfortable with.

I enjoyed sharing a photo album from a recent trip - and enjoyed also having lots of positive feedback from both family and professional colleagues.

But, I was a little uncomfortable to find myself an observer of some foolishness on the part of others. For instance, I "poked" an adult grandson who is studying abroad and reminded him that his grandfather and I were looking forward to hearing about his experiences as an exchange student and teacher of English.

I got a great, long, newsy letter in response. Which was wonderful. But I also got to see his brand of silliness in the way he presented himself to his peers -- which was way too much information for me to want to have . . . I'd like to keep my illusions about his intellectual and social maturity, but, alas, not so.

Oh, well -- just will make me cautious about what I say about myself there!

Hello, I am Marsha West. I have been teaching and facilitating online for several years, but I'm a little slow at getting comfortable with social media. (I'm very comfortable with straight asynchronous text conversation online.) I've finally been persuaded to join my family and colleagues on facebook. I've done a few Eluminate sessions. But much of what we'll be dealing with here is new to me and I'm looking forward to learning a lot in the next three weeks.

I'd like to hear more about this Sylvia. How does it work? Who would be able to use it? Etc.