Three Words For Education

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Online Learning

Making the Online Experience More Meaningful

When thinking about the question: "How can online learning be more meaningful?" the first thing that comes to mind is my current MAET online learning experience. Although I have had experiences with discussion blogs in the past, this is my first true online course. Reflecting on my own progress thus far, I have some ideas of what makes online learning meaningful: 



Feedback:


I agree that our students may struggle to find the online learning experience engaging unless there is constant feedback from peers and instructors. This is a mindset shift from taking a stack of papers home and crunching the numbers to instead logging on to kidblog and commenting on your students' posts. I think this is a radical change for some. But, I am willing to promote such tools as kidblog because it allows for fluid peer feedback and teacher feedback. Without feedback, students can easily feel unheard in their online experience and therefore might become unmotivated. 

Inquiry Based Learning:


I initially struggled with our content connections web page because I was unsure how to incorporate inquiry based learning and wasn't clear on the importance of including inquiry tasks. I feel these struggles were natural because sometimes as teachers we get in the mode of delivering content instead of being coaches of learning. I pushed myself to not create a web page that just gave the information and "checked for understanding". I was proud of my end result: My students would be able to form their own questions about the content and explore ideas as a collaborative group. This assignment, along with the projects we are completing in 811 and 812, have allowed me to see the importance of inquiry in the online process. 


Creativity: 

A great benefit of online learning is that it lets all students, no matter their artist ability, show their creativity. I have enjoyed creating and brainstorming for my multi-genre project  because it has such opportunity to be creative and different. This project alone has made my online experience meaningful. I know that if I provide tools to my students such as Glogster and Animoto that they will flourish in their learning due to the creativity opportunities available. Often times pencil and paper assignments are too limited and don't push our students to think outside the box. Online learning is a perfect solution to this problem.

Lesson Plan (Re) Creation with UDL Updates

Below is a revised version of my Lesson Plan (Re) Creation with adjustments based off the UDL framework. 
MaroccoLessonPlanReCreationRevised

Universal Design for Learning Checklist

Below is my Universal Design for Learning Checklist that I made for the Lesson (Re) Creation assignment. I really found this checklist to be helpful when thinking about if my lesson was UDL friendly. I found that I was able to explain that a lot of my lesson elements were already features of UDL, such as options for perceptions and comprehension. But I also discovered my barrier areas, such as options for language and symbols and options for physical action. I am actually excited to go back and modify my lesson so that I can fix my barrier areas to make my lesson universally designed for all learners!

UDL Checklist

Lesson Plan (Re) Creation

MaroccoLessonPlanReCreation

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

I enjoyed reading the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. I felt that many ideas portrayed in this article are ideas that I have learned at MSU, but also concepts that I am practicing in the classroom. My school promotes a model of collaboration and team work. Every team within the building meets on a daily and weekly basis to share resources, ideas, results, adjustments and feedback. Authors Bender and Gray of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, would agree that such models allows us to be the best we can be in the classroom.

Another concept discussed in this article that I practice is formative assessment. Bender and Gray point out, "We must use what we learn about their learning as data that justify or require us to change our practices...". I am in the habit of informally assessing my students so that I can know what to teach next and who to teach what. Formative assessment ties into Educational Technology because I have discovered in this process that sometimes all students need is a new tool to master the objective--and sometimes that is a technology related tool.

What I found most intriguing in this article was pointing out different teaching styles and how they influence learning. The article points out, "We have begun to understand how teaching styles influence learning and about gender and cultural differences and their direct relationship to learning." I have had the privalege of being trained in gender specific learning at the Gurian Institute in Denver, CO. I am teaching an all girls class this fall. I was so enlightened at this conference to learn all the differences between how girls and boys learn differently. I am excited that my school is making such huge strides and taking action on what the research of teaching reveals.

When thinking about goal oriented learning, I am proud to say that again my school promotes lesson designing with goal oriented learning in mind. At the beginning of the last year, my teammates and I designed a unit plan keeping our end objectives in mind. So, we started the unit plan by creating the summative assessment. This ensured that each lesson had a place and purpose towards mastering the summative assessment. Goal oriented learning is a great way to keep the lessons on track, but it can also be difficult to design summative assessments before designing the lessons that help teach the material on the summative assessment.

Motivational Poster/Reflection

I am feeling very reflective about this whirlwind experience. I have felt exhausted and frustrated at times, but I am feeling like I have learned so much about ed tech and so many useful tools. I am taking the time to look around and realize that I am a part of a program that will allow me to create informed 21st century learners. 

My personal learning network has expanded throughout this course. Not only have I made personal connections with colleagues in class, but I have made use of technology related networks. I have really enjoyed expanding my PLN with my personal blog. I had never blogged before, but I am feeling that blogging has allowed me to have a professional voice that I can share with others. I have loved the opportunity to share multimedia projects on my blog. I plan on continuing to use my blog throughout the school year as a reflective and informative space.

I also have enjoyed having twitter because it’s a social network that I was able to use exclusively for professional purposes. I plan to continue to follow relevant hashtags on twitter, so that I am able to stay aware of ed technology news. I also like that twitter exposes me to new colleagues that have similar and difference experiences. 


I hope to contribute to the professional learning of my school colleagues by exposing them to PLN resources, such as blogging and twitter. But, I also am excited to share technology tools such as glogster, prezi, iMovie, weebly, voicethread, quickfires, jing, wordle, QR codes, Animoto and bubble. This tool opens so many possibilities within the classroom. But, I am want to be sure to encourage others to develop lessons around these tools, rather than simply making them additions to lessons.