Module 8 Reflection

Sometimes what we learn has nothing to do with the course objectives. My adventure into online learning this summer has, at times, presented me with just such learning opportunities. Taking two online courses at one time was more than I had expected. I assumed that since I was able to work and take a course in the spring, taking two courses in the summer would be no harder. I was wrong. As a very visual person, I struggled to keep assignments and discussion topics straight in my mind. There was no classroom to picture in my mind, no classmates faces to relate to, and I was often thinking, “Wait, which course was that?” The view from the student chair is quite different from the view behind the teacher desk, particularly in the online world. I would say the empathy gained for my students this fall rivals the knowledge gained about online facilitation and assessment in particular.

I am excited about the progress, this course in particular, allowed me to make on putting together the online health class. With another day or two of work in the coming weeks, I should have a good presentation ready for Back-to-School night where I plan to introduce the concept to parents. I hesitated doing more than a Word document for the final project, but I am now thrilled that I have this information available online. Parents who are unable to come to Back-to-School Night will be able to get the same information so easily.

My goal is to secure a position teaching possibly one online course in addition to continuing my current part-time work teaching sixth grade. Additionally, I plan to take the next course in the e-Learning program and by spring plan to be doing my practicum for said certificate and offering our schools first online course.

Module 7 Reflection

Process: The final project for Assessment class is allowing me to begin thinking through the health online course and how to best assure students are actively engaged. I began with a word document because it was familiar. When I had a good draft done, I began to think of the potential of a power point presentation, which could be used at my Back-to-School night to introduce the idea of health online. When I began working in the power point, my project became more clear for me, and I considered trying something new for me. This lead me to SlideShare, where I have posted my Final Project draft.

Results: So far I am quite happy with the results, as I feel the presentation looks very  professional and I am excited to share the final course outline with parents and students. I have already emailed my principal to take at look at what I have so far. I do not yet consider the document done, but certainly on the right road.

Application: This final project has directed me to actually producing a syllabus of sorts for the health online course. I will continue to develop the presentation, making sure to include all modules and possibly rearranging things a bit to better appeal to my audience of students and parents. By late September I hope to have the presentation complete and show it as part of Back-to-School night. After that night, I will direct parents to Slideshare where it will be available until at least January 2011. This will be very beneficial for parents who are unable to attend Back-to-School night. I will also direct parents to wiki (or possibly a blog) where they can post questions and I can post a reply.

Module 6 Reflection

After some clarification on the final project, I was able to get significant work done. While I appreciate the focus of the assignment, the time spent has been overwhelming, and it will only represent about 1/2 of what I need to develop before this online course is ready. I will be quite disappointed if plans to offer it in January fall through.

Exploration this week on rubrics has helped me to located several good websites as starting points and even some rubric generators. I plan to attached weblinks to my eLearning website. Additionally, I have found several websites with information about online learning and the most exciting was the beta version of Google Scholar search engine. This narrows the results to academic papers on whatever keyword you use. Found fabulous stuff to read once my courses are done.

I am almost on information overload as I need more time to process and practice what I have learned. August looks to be a busy month as I revamp some stuff and continue to work on this online health course.

Module 5 Reflection

This week’s assignment helped to order my thinking about an online course. I appreciate charts and tools that are linear and even though the case study was difficult to work with, the Bloom chart helped me to sort out the case study.

More importantly, it allowed me to begin thinking about the activities for an online Health course. I am concerned about my ability to delineate course objectives, but plan to do a few practice ones during the upcoming week.

While I continue to see that the success of a course is related to clearly identified goals and activities to reach those goals, I also learn from being the online student. I am carefully considering tools and activities that are difficult for a self-motivated adult learner like me, and what is the potential success a middle school student would have with a similar activity, specifically group work online. I certainly will not be able to ask my middle school students to learn a new Web 2.0 tool and do a group project in the same week. The time frame will be to short and the learning curve too steep. Time will need to be spent helping them learn the tool first and then possibly have an assignment using a collaboration tool. I have also determined I will not recommend Word Press.

Module 4 Reflection

This week marked the halfway point of my assessment class. As part of the classwork, and as a mid-term project, we were asked to complete a group project and we were to use an online meeting tool.

Working as a group online presents different challenges than meeting as a group face to face. I am not a big group project person because I tend to want to complete work early so that I can reflect and edit as the deadline for submission draws near. Having to learn how to use an online meeting tool and work in a group was quite frustrating for me.

The first challenge was getting a meeting time for three busy people. This is a challenged faced by any group, but with one week to work, I felt added pressure. Once we set a time to meet, only one other group member was able to meet. Then we had trouble getting in the same meeting location. Once that was all fixed, I had a good meeting with one group member and we felt we were well on our way to completing the midterm.

Another meeting time was set, during part of my vacation time. I spent two hours seeking an internet location that would work and by that time the meeting was over. I emailed my group mates with further work I had completed and hoped for the best. As the week draws to a close, I never really worked with one of the members of the group. That makes assessment very difficult. I appreciate the other group members efforts to be the glue that held our group together. Now, prayer takes over for me, as I know that I have done all that I could do to make this project a success.

Regarding the tool, aside from being able to see the other person’s paper, I did not find the online meeting site that helpful. Looking back, I probably should have spent time before the meeting exploring the site, but then my problem all along has been too many tools to learn in too short a time.

At this point, I doubt a middle school student would stick with this process as long as I did, nor will they find the meeting site easy to use. For those two reasons, I double I will use this tool with my current age level.

Week 3 Reflection

This week I was asked to work with a tool that, to me, seems rather abstract/random. I felt grumpy and put out being forced to work so randomly. These feelings give me great empathy for my students who are abstract/random and are forced to work within my concrete/sequential methods. That is my ‘aha’ moment for this week.

These feelings open my eyes to the need to create more variation in my teaching methods and assessment techniques. I have doubts about how successful I will be, given the nature of our school, however I am beginning to feel ready to test the waters. I actually thought of a place to “show off” Inspiration to my students; ooo, ooo, I am getting another brainstorm. Must go write these down in my idea notebook. (Yes, it is a print notebook. Another area of my life that might need some updating.)

Week 2 Reflection

What was the most valuable information that you learned in this module? I am not sure I learned this week as much as was reminded; reminded that my students will appreciate knowing I am a learner too and that rubrics have great value for me and the student. I am reminded of the many uses for a blog and one use might be to allow students to learn from each other by posting the “stellar questions” to a classroom blog.

How will you implement this in your school? Well, the “stellar questions” blog is one way to implement. Additionally, this summer and next school year I plan to develop more rubrics for various assessment tools of my class.

In what area(s) do you feel you need more information or practice? I continue to look for websites, wikis, and blogs that help me to stay current with middle school teaching strategies and provide application ideas and examples. It is hard to find these resources for a middle school teacher who teaches all subjects. If I can quickly see the research and ideas of implementation, then I can begin to come up with how to use it in my classroom. Unfortunately, I end up spending hours reading flowery research filled with educationese or searching the internet for appropriate application links. This can be very frustrating and, dare I say, a waste of time.

Week 1 Reflection

What was the most valuable information that you learned in this module? So far I have been familiar with the tools that have been introduced (wiki & blog) but, as is often the case, I have trouble seeing all the potential uses for a tool. The most valuable information so far has been an opening of my mind to the possible ways to use these two tools. I look forward to making an extensive list of potential uses for all the tools we explore.

How will you implement this in your school? Our school is already exploring ways to use the web to keep parents/guardians and students informed.  My principal is open to use of web tools, however we also want to be sensitive about student privacy. Initially I hope to use a wiki for possibly glossary work. In January, I hope to do more with the health curriculum, but right now I do no know how that will come together exactly.

In what area(s) do you feel you need more information or practice? I need more ideas on how to use these two tools. I don’t feel I need a large bag of tools, but would prefer a small bag of tools that have a wide variety of uses.

Welcome

A word about my header. Last spring I had the opportunity to go to Washington DC area with our 7/8 grade students. Since I had been to Willamsburg and DC before, I was most struck by Gettysburg. My header photo was taken at Gettysburg. It is amazing how history comes alive when you visit these types of locations.