Quotes from Readings and Class Tasks and Activities Week Two Reflections “The key to success in online environments may have more to do with the characteristics primarily responsible for success in any teaching and learning environment - the quality of the learning materials and instruction - than with the medium used to deliver that instruction” (Rice, 12). “An icebreaker should not require anything more than the ability to express knowledge of self” (Conrad & Donaldson, 52). “An effective reflective activity requires students to share a synthesis of the learning experience” (Conrad & Donaldson, 82). Week Three Reflections
Week Four Reflections Reflect on your experience with online community building. In your reflection, discuss the following: 1) what community you joined or created and why, 2) a URL that references your online community, 3) a brief summary of your experience as a participant in the online community, and 4) your reflections on how online communities can be used to effectively support student engagement in learning. If you can, attach a copy of your Online Community Strategies and Rationale with your reflection as an artifact of your work this week. Week Six Reflections Facilitate a real-time chat activity and reflect on the experience. Feel free to combine this activity with the group collaboration assignment for this week. There are any number of tools to that you can use for this activity. Week Seven Reflections Continue with the facilitated chat/discussion board activity from last week. Week Eight Reflections Review the iNACOL Standards for Quality Online Teaching. In your journal reflect on these standards. Do you think they are all that different from good teaching standards in any environment? Which standards stand out as most important? Which standards would not apply in a traditional brick and mortar classroom? Include any ideas or thoughts you would like in this reflection. What are your thoughts about the readings this week? Have you identified any authentic activities that you might like to try with your students? How about virtual activities and/or simulations. Perform an Internet search and try to locate resources that might be valuable to your students in learning a specific concept or skill. List them in your reflective journal. Week 9 Reflections Once you have a good idea about your own learning style, brainstorm a list of online technologies and strategies that you feel would be best for your learning style and for a learning style that is different from yours. Your list should have at least 4 technologies and/or strategies for each learning style. For example, an auditory learner might benefit from a LIVE presentation where she can listen to the instructor give a demonstration. Just as many of the learning styles can overlap and each student can have a unique combination, so can the technologies and strategies used to teach them. Record this list in your reflective journal. You can also share your results with the class in the discussion forum. Week 10 Reflections Week 11 Reflections Reflection Journal: Practice self-evaluation and assess your asynchronous lesson using the rubric I will use to evaluate your work. Content Learning Styles Engagement Adaptive/Assistive Technologies Assessment Week 12 Reflections View the video in the resources above and reflect on you own teaching style. Is it primarily teacher-centered and lecture-driven? In online environments, the lecture component of any lesson can often be delivered asynchronously as preparation for live meetings that are reserved for those times when interactions are critical for learning. Think about this shift and what it means in terms of your own teaching. Create a list of lesson ideas or strategies that might be especially suitable for live meetings using synchronous delivery tools. Week 13 & 14 Reflections Optional Reflection Journal: Topic of choice. Week 15 & 16 Reflections No postings in the reflection journals necessary. | Thoughts/Learning/Questions I think this is a smart observation. In addition to the quality of the materials, the organization is also important. Having a content management system with a clean, clear, user-friendly interface is also important. Last year I had my journalism students submit all their work via Google Docs. While it took a little bit of instruction for them to learn the organization of the folders and files, once they got the hang of it they were able to easily submit work and find instructional resources and student exemplars to help them.
I agree that there are benefits to having a low-stakes, social activity to provide the necessary “social lubricant” required to get new groups of students talking and mingling. These types of activities - while seemingly trivial - are wonderful at establishing the foundation of community. When students feel comfortable talking, sharing, learning about and honoring one another, the potential for collaboration and teamwork rises exponentially. Deep, meaningful, effective reflection is hard. It requires time, as the author’s suggest, and a learning environment where such endeavors are valued and supported by both students and the instructor. It’s important that all constituents be open to feedback on how they can do their jobs better. If the goal is really to grow, improve, and progress, then reflective activities - and the insights they can bring - should be encouraged. My interview questions were adapted for use in a brick and mortar classroom with students in my Journalism class. The questions definitely got students thinking, sharing, and opening up, both with their reasons for enrolling in the class, and also about themselves and their hobbies and interests. Yes, definitely. These students are very familiar with formulaic, process-style writing assignments, where they memorize the shape of a container (i.e. a five paragraph essay) and then fill that container with content. In journalism, content drives the shape of the container, not the other way around. It will take students a little bit of time to get used to, but eventually they will figure it out. It wasn’t too difficult to keep students on track, as there was an element of choice regarding the questions, and they are, after all, journalism students interested in learning the skills of a newspaper reporter. Asking questions, recording answers, and arranging the material in an interesting and easy-to-understand fashion are all skills that the majority of the students would like to acquire. This is definitely a valuable exercise to start off the school year. It gets students thinking and talking, and sends a message right away that the class is student-centered and cooperative. The exercise also provides me with a good student writing sample from each kids, which helps to set a baseline of what they are capable of. I joined a community of edubloggers about six years ago. Over the past couple of years, began to establish my Twitter account as a resource for professional development. For this week, I read some posts, checked out some links, and posted a few of my own. My twitter handle is twitter.com/mrbg. From there, you can see who I follow. Twitter is an absolutely fantastic source for professional development. Even just 10 or 15 minutes browsing people’s posts results in the discovery of a near lesson idea or a cool concept I could apply to my teaching or learning as a graduate student. Being part of an online community adds meaning and depth to what I do. It helps break the isolation that is, still, so prevalent in education. Because of my participation in this online community, I am a more reflective practitioner, and, thus, a more effective teacher. Just as I find engagement in my own online community, so too can students. Having a group of peers tasked with the same assignments and asked to think about the same things provides a common thread through which they can learn, explore, and discover more about themselves and their classmates. The online community provides a vehicle - a mechanism for communication that wasn’t available not too long ago. With progress and evolution comes new technology and tools. We should utilize them to their full advantage, both for ourselves, and our charges. Here is my Online Community Strategies and Rationale -> http://bit.ly/UB7Pen Debbie and I were able to get together for a synchronous chat using a Blackboard platform she uses for her Florida virtual schools instruction. While we were the only ones from our group who were able to get together, it was still a meaningful and worthwhile meeting. We used voice chat to communicate in real time, talking about the assignment and our understanding of the expectations. We then discussed some of the things we have in common, each being from the New England area originally. While I have never facilitated a synchronous chat before with my students, I can definitely see how it could be helpful, especially for students who are absent, or those who need extra help but aren’t able to stay after due to work or extracurricular activities. I’ve definitely enjoyed being part of a group responsible for considering the norms and practices involving online communications with students and teachers. It’s been helpful to hear the different perspectives from my group members, which are informed by their individual teaching experiences. The more collaboration and dialogue I have, the more I realize that although we’re all in this business of “education,” what it looks like and how we go about it can differ greatly. I see this as both a strength and a weaknesses. While I believe educational decisions are best made locally, there are definitely municipalities which need assistance and resources from the state or federal level. It will be interesting to see what happens with the Common Core, and if it is truly able to improve K-12 public education in this country. Standard A relates to the teacher understanding how to teach in the online environment. I see this as similar to a brick and mortar classroom teacher understanding how to group students, structure discussions, and develop procedures and protocols that allow for and enhance learning within that environment. Standard B calls for the instructor to utilize a variety of technologies to support learning and engagement. I would say this standard is almost word-for-word the corresponding standard for classroom teachers. We all need to use technologies (be it a pencil or a smartpen) to get students interested in the material and support them in their learning endeavors. Standard C, again, is a dead-ringer for what effective teaching looks like in the classroom. Good teaching is good teaching regardless of the environment. When students are engaged, working together to build and apply knowledge and utilizing higher-order thinking skills, then the teacher has done her work! Standard D calls for clear expectations, prompt responses, and regular feedback to students. That is part and parcel of being an effective educator, regardless of medium. Standard E calls for the instructor to follow legal and ethical guidelines. The same holds true for the classroom. Standard F asks instructors to be cognizant of the diverse needs of students. This is very similar to differentiated instruction, where the teacher may make adjustments to help the students access the curriculum and achieve success. Standard G denotes the importance of valid, reliable, and effective assessments. The use of formal and informal assessments and evaluative tools are part of a good teacher’s toolbox, regardless of if it’s in cyberspace or the classroom. Standard H states that the online teacher will develop and deliver assessments and assignments aligned with standards-based learning goals. So to do effective classroom teachers. Standard I calls on teachers to use data to inform instruction. This is a good idea regardless of where you teach. Standard J touts the importance of being professional and collegial. It is wise to do this both in person and online. Standard K asks teachers to be mindful as they align and arrange media and other instructional tools to help students achieve learning goals. The same concept applies to the classroom teacher. One resource I found that could be valuable to my students in learning vocabulary is Membean. The site has a lot of different ways to help students construct associations with vocabulary so that they will remember words when they encounter them again. The site also has some effective context-laden strategies for helping students use new vocabulary in their own writing. I would say one of my learning strengths is verbal/linguistic. Technologies which support this learning style include blogs, Twitter, discussion boards, wikis, Wordle, Visuwords, and Freerice, to name a few. For learners more inclined to visual/spatial Intelligence, sites like YouTube, Membean, Animoto, Glogster, and Presi come to mind. Even a site like Visifi has taken a traditionally text-based document like the resume and infused it with graphics and visuals. For better or worse, our culture is placing a greater premium on visual literacy; educators need to keep pace with these trends and changes so students have sufficient skills to both navigate and create in this medium. No written reflection required for this week. It was nice to have a break. This actually gave me an opportunity to catch up on my Twitter feed, which is a fantastic professional development resource. I also managed to check up on my blogroll, and came across this great post from Dr. Schroder on fellow EDTECH professor Chris Haskell and his work with 3DGameLab. 16-20 - My lesson includes all of the following 16-20 - Once I add my YouTube instructional video, my lesson will include multiple representations of material. A number of the articles students can choose from also contain pictorial, audio, or video supplements. 16-20 - The use of Google Docs provides for instantaneous feedback via the “comment” function. Students have lots of choice in this assignment, as they can choose the newspaper website they visit, and then, subsequently, the article lead they choose to rewrite. 16-20 - Students will be able to view my blog, YouTube, the newspaper websites, and the dfDoc on any media device, be it PC, laptop, iPad, or smartphone. By using text-to-speech software, students will be able to have their article read to them. Software like Dragon Naturally Speaking will allow them to speak their leads into Google Docs. 16-20 - The checklist assessment provides students with guidance and structure while composing their leads; the peer evaluation serves as an evaluative measure after the leads are composed. The Google Doc comment function provides a third form of assessment, which could include peer or instructor comments. My teaching style is definitely teacher-centered, with desk clusters of four set up in my classroom. While there are times that I need to give direct instruction, I try and have students research ideas and concepts and share out with the class. This way, I am not the sole “dispenser” of information - the students are. Then, once a specific concept or skill is understood, we can practice and apply that knowledge. Lessons conducive for live meetings could involve posting questions and having students post responses, having students generate questions to share with a partner in a chat, or to have participants engage in some kind of webquest. There could also be a specific script or line of inquiry students would be asked to follow when engaging with fellow classmates and/or the instructor. The key is having structured, active lessons that give all participants a role and an opportunity to participate in the learning activity. I enjoyed meeting Afton in our Google Hangout. Like most Google products, I found it intuitive to use, with a number of worthwhile features. It wasn’t until after I recorded our chat with Screencast-O-Matic that I realized Hangout had its own internal recording mechanism. I will have to try this out the next time I use Hangout. I am excited about the possibilities of using Hangout both with my students and with colleagues. Yesterday as I was leaving school I had a conversation with the foreign language department chairwoman about how I had just used Hangout for my a Boise State class, and that I thought it had a lot of potential in a variety of ways across disciplines. She has now added me on Google Plus; perhaps soon we’ll “Hangout!” One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about this course - and, frankly, all EDTECH courses - is that in addition to theory and pedagogy, there’s a heavy dose of application, experimentation, and play. As a high school teacher with a much-too-full plate, it’s been great to have these graduate classes as a motivator to both learn new and innovative ways to approach education, but to also be encouraged to play and experiment with a variety of tools. As a final note here in this space, I’ve enjoyed using the double-entry format for reflections. It’s something I’ve used with my students, and will likely utilize again in the future. |