Week 7 Reflection

I finally got the final project put together. I am hoping there are not too many flaws with it. I went through it quite carefully. The biggest problem I had with it was trying to embed ojects into the googlepage that I used for the web. Other than that, it was a fun project. There were some things that could have made it more fun, but I had to keep the tools at a beginners level in order to make this a workable class.

There were some difficult aspects to this project. The most difficult was selecting the tools. Second was putting it into a proper format. The outline for the project helped, but actually getting it down was a bit of a challenge. I always include the key components into a lesson that were required for this project, but I don't always break it down that way--bad habits that I fell into when I became an administrator.

Other than that, I enjoyed the challenge of the project. Here is a link to my FINAL PROJECT.

Week 6 Reflection

"Cybercoaching: Rubrics, Feedback, and Metacognition, Oh My!" by Naomi Jeffery Petersen, Ed.D. was a good article to read at this time. She defined cybercoaching as "a way to use readily available technology for the coaching funtion of an instructor." (page 3) This ties in well with our final projects. It really fits in well with mine as my focus is on the teacher and the use of the available technology for assesment. As I mentioned in one of my assignments, though, this is not a "basic idea" in my school, and not much of Montana. We are the only state in the nation that does not sponsor an online school in some fashion. Reasons from the state are it is too expensive, the union fights it, etc. There is also the issue of administrators afraid of online education and teachers who have not been introduced to it, so are afraid of it.

Another point I mentioned was in response to Stags comment about coaching and teaching. The things that many teachers forget is that you can't always expect the kids to know. As a coach, I teach even the basic skills every year. "You should know how to do that" doesn't work too well in a varsity game when expecting the player to remember a skill that was introduced in 6th grade. Same goes in the classroom. When teaching grammar, I never "expected" anything. I quickly, or slowly, covered verbs, nouns, subjects, predicates, etc.

My online class will attempt to provide a tool which will introduce online assesment tools to my teachers, and then perhaps go beyond our school. My previous entry will have a link to my project, as well as a better explanation of it.

Working on the dimdim today was nice. Even though there were some technical difficulties, it was a nice tool to tie in class members from around the world. I have used elluminate before and it allows for more people to talk, but other than that it was not much different than dimdim.

Pre-Class Survey

I have created a link for my pre-class survey here. I used a survey tool from our school website. I really like it because it provides me with a thorough analysis of the survey outcome. I can also set the date perameters. Feel free to take the survey at: http://www.florence.k12.mt.us/13701091116497483/forms/TakeSurvey.asp?PageNumber=1&SurveyID=5KJ9l3LM3o5KK

I also have the link for my final project. Please take a look and feel free to comment. I am getting things organized fairly well. I decided to use a web page and a google home page as key components for my class so that I could utilize the email that was offered. It only cost $10 for a year and I get 200 accounts. That way if I can expand this class, it will already be in place. It helps so that the emails I send out can be done as a group more easily and we can also set up chat times. I will link much of my class to a wiki or blog so that there can be a comments page.
Final site

Week 5 Reflection

This week we worked with Bloom's Taxonomy and looked at some information on plagiarism.

Looking at Christine Casey's class about exploring the truth in journalism and tying it to Bloom's Taxonomy brought about lots of discussion. Many people felt that Casey did not address higher orders of thinking. I had trouble identifying higher order of thinking at first also. I then thought of how I would teach the class the same way she described it and saw a few examples of higher order thinking. My table can be viewed at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfwgsqgr_2gr59gwqc .

I am beginning to formulate a plan for the final project. I am thinking about an online type of class I would like to have available for my staff. The class would teach some of the web 2.0 utilities that we have been covering for assessment purposes. I would utilize blogs, wikis, survey monkey, and a few other tools. I would have teachers working in small teams for discovery and utilization of the tools. I would also have the teachers develop a unit that they would then teach online to their students.

There are still some questions about the final that seem to be confusing some folks. I noticed quite a few questions on D2L that were not answered yet. I am curious to see how the questions are answered.

Week 4 Reflection

This ended up being a tough week for a midterm, but it seems to have worked out in the end. I tried to step outside the box this time and create more of a video paper vs. a traditional paper. I don't think it was too well received--and I may have been off base--so I reworked it into a regular paper with the video paper attached. I approached the midterm from the stand point of an administrator with the TeacherEase grading/curriculum mapping program. One of the best things I was able to accomplish in my previous job was to get buy in from the teachers to track their curriculum and student assessment to see if they were really teaching what they thought they were. This tool seems like a good way to do that. I think it would be a nice tool for some things, but I know that much of the online teaching tool software, like Moodle and D2L have grading components. The curriculum component is what sold me.

I did have fun with the video paper. It is a neat tool to capture the screen and show how to do things or point out key items of interest.

I would have liked to have the midterm split into 2 segments. The first segment is to produce your paper and get it into a toolbox. The second part would be a week to edit and fine tune the product. I was able to get my paper done in the nick of time, but was unable to collaborate on the final product.

Building the toolbox, though was a nice exercise. I enjoyed looking at some of the tools other teams utilized in building their toolbox. Ours can be found at http://bhs.cusd220.lake.k12.il.us/media_folder/Assignments/Midtermhome.html

Week 3 Reflection

This week was a good challenge for me. I really did struggle with the concept map and inspiration. Using it was difficult for me, as was breaking down my ideas without it getting too convoluted. I am wondering if high school kids would have the same problem or if that is not even an issue. McLinden and Trochim apply their concept by using a business model. I really struggle when people try to compare education to business. Business is all about product and profit. If we are to really educate every child, education cannot think that way. If we did, we would cut loose every special ed and title kid.
I had more fun with the Bonk article. I included the first part of my discussion below because I thought it was interesting all the tools I have or do use now.

As I was going through Bonk's "The Perfect E-Storm" article, I started to note which of the technologies I have actually utilized in the past couple years. They are as follows:
blogs
Asynchronous Conferencing
CMSs
Collaborative Tools
Digital Libraries
Digital Portfolios
Handhelds
Instructor Portals
Interactive News Media
IP Videoconferencing
Online quizes/exams/polls
Online homework/gradebook
Synchronous conferencing
video streaming
wireless technology

Concept Mapping

I like concept mapping as a tool to see how well kids understand their topics as well as from an organizational point. Inspiration was the tool used, but it is an added cost for schools. Erica noted Gliffy.com as a free tool. Are there others? We have used Microsoft Word as well as Excel in some classrooms.

I am personally still not a big fan of this tool, but I do think it has great uses in the classroom. I seem to be fairly adept at seeing the picture of the project or whatever it is in my head. When I start to break things out in a diagram, I seem to get lost in what I am trying to do. And then the project gets too large for me. I do think, though, that if I used it more I could become better at keeping things narrowed down--especially for my audience!