About a year and a half ago at the main branch of the Saskatoon Public
Library I came across PressDisplay.com. It allows for access to
thousands of newspapers and magazines from around the world. It has most
if not all the major papers from across Canada. For the U.S. it has
such reputable publications as The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times; though unfortunately it doesn’t have The New York Times. Why
I am including this in this weeks current events is that earlier in the
week when I was looking at the online materials that the Saskatchewan
Ministry of Education provides, I came across PressDisplay.com, and this
weekend I have placed it on our School Libraries home page. Here is the
link that PressDisplay has for demonstrating an overview of what their
site does. http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/ShowDemo.aspx?name=demo_homepage

I feel this site has great potential for history classes as you can
look at the news from a variety of perspectives and locations. The
Editors vs Readers bar is beneficial as a lead in for discussions of
what makes something newsworthy.  EAL students can benefit from the
translation capabilities, especially in the printed form, as the robotic automated voice needs to be improved upon.

About three weeks ago I attended my first unconference. It took place on a
Saturday morning at Evan Hardy Collegiate in Saskatoon. It was
organized by the Saskatoon Public School Division, and it invited people
from across the division to share their knowledge and expertise with
fellow colleagues. One of the presenters that I found very helpful and
informative was Yvonne Denomy a recent graduate from our TL-DL program
at the U of A. I thought that was one of the benefits of the
unconference was the connecting directly with others who have a passion
for education and exchanging ideas. My thoughts turned to the
unconference this week after reading the blog 2 cents worth by David
Warlick “Instituting learning Habits”

With me working on my TL-DL this fall seems to have inspired my 15 year old
daughter to ask me questions this week regarding online schooling and
tradtitional schooling.

“What are the pros and cons dad of taking your classes online in comparison to traditional classes?”

“How much does it cost in comparison?”

It made me reflect upon how I have been learning, and the challenges and the benefits I have been experiencing.

Its been over 20 years since I was last taking classes so it makes it
somewhat difficult to compare. I do thrive on direct person to person
interaction, and I do feel that is one of the strengths of traditional
schooling that is somewhat missing from our online course. This is
compensated for in our course by our small discussion groups. And even
though we are not skyping I do like the fact that our pictures are
posted to our comments. I am challenged technologically and that makes
the course more difficult but also more rewarding and gratifying when I
do learn new skills. The flexibility the course provides is a strong
benefit as well as its inquiry format and emphasis on individual
responsibility.

Final Analysis:  I am very impressed with the online format of education I am experiencing.

And according to yesterdays Blog Post:  Online Students vs Traditional Students in Stephen Abram’s Stephen’s Lighthouse We are not alone in gaining a quality education online.