This research class is the first one I have taken that really dug deep into analyzing education and research. I thoroughly enjoyed it and the textbook. Research is an area I have always enjoyed. I love the details about it and the data. I liked the way the book kept reviewing information read in previous chapters, that really helped me get it sunk into my brain, especially with all the other things that my brain has been occupied with this summer.
We learned about the two groups of data which are qualitative and quantitative data. Quantitative was used when studying large groups of people so they can get numerical data, which is usually very sound. Qualitative data is more subjective, often they study smaller groups and the research is usually about a central phenomenon. You will more narratives about qualitative results because of the types of open ended questions they ask, including probing. In the results with quantitative studies, you will get more data as evidence to prove something one way or another. There was so much more than what I just summed up including: the design of the research study, the types of participants, and the methods used to conduct the research, the limitations, the validity, and the findings. I really loved learning all about it. When I grow up, if I ever leave teaching, brain research is the field I would go into in a heartbeat! Besides learning all about the two types of data, we also completed three article analyses and a mini lit review. I wrote my mini lit review on a technology subject I am passionate about. The question is; Can blogging impact writing in the elementary classroom? I have so much information that narrowing it down is the hardest part, I want to share so much! I look forward to sharing it with my staff at school as blogging is a digital tool that I would like to see more elementary classes using in our school. ITEC 7460 - Course Reflection- – May 2014
I loved everything about this class from the very beginning. I loved the opportunity to coach someone and actually keep a journal to report the progress that the teacher was making. I’ve coached teachers for years with technology but not like I did this time. I was following up and following up and keeping track on how she was doing after I coached her. This was new, before I had coached teachers by supporting, teaching, and following up. This was a little different because I had to keep record and actually comment on how the teacher was doing as far as listening to me and following through. I also loved the One Hour Workshop that I did teaching Kidblog to my co-workers. I was so enthusiastic about it; repeated it three times to accommodate my co-workers and their schedules when I only had to do it once. This was a great experience as well. I noticed I got better teaching my peers after each time. This was one form of professional development because we were to teach and inform our co-workers about the benefits of the technology tool that we introduced. This was rewarding because here we could see how difficult to teach to our peers and they wanted to be there. During the mandatory professional development, since we usually do not want to go if we are being forced to go, they need to really bring in inspiring presenters to keep our attention. This class taught me a lot about professional development including about the funds that fulfill those sessions. If we are using our money to pay for these, we want them to be beneficial. Our goal with professional development is for it to benefit the teachers and their instruction along with student achievement. This class will really help me as I plan to become an “official” technology coach one day. It taught me a lot about presentation and the importance of that when working with other teachers. It taught me how to talk to teachers so that they will respect and follow your lead. I know I will be using the techniques I learned in this class to better myself as a teacher and a technology coach. I am a numbers person so I was very excited to take this class. I always take data and am always working on excel with charts. Having said this, when I had to listen to tutorials on Excel about creating graphs, I was so happy. This is something I have always wanted to do on my own but have never taken the time to do it. Since I had to do it for a class, it was ok to take the time to learn how to make the many different types of graphs due to it being a requirement for class. In this class, we also were collecting and analyzing data from our own schools. We collected the data on specific tests, the CRCT test from the last 3- 5 years. Then we broke it down into smaller sub groups which could have been race, gender, Special Education, or even ELL. That was always interesting as we were digging down into the data or breaking it into pieces to get to the bottom of the results. Sometimes the differences were quite vast.
Breaking down the data helped us find the areas of weakness. This is where I enjoyed making the graphs for the broken down pieces of data. In our school, we always say that, “Data should drive the instruction.” This means to look at our data from things like pre-tests so that we know what we have to teach and to who. Our principal always reminded us that we don’t need to waste our time teaching kids things that they already know. We had to complete a Data Overview for our final project. It was quite fun, I thought. We broke down the data for our school in specific areas of the CRCT for a certain grade. We looked at data from: the state, the district and our own school for that year’s CRCT. That was very interesting to me. I can see how I’d use this coursework if I was technology coach. Coaching teachers to graph the results of their pre-tests in specific subjects and then helping them use the results to better their instruction is what this is all about. ITEC 7480 was another amazing class taught by Amy Vitala! As we all know, online learning is growing across the United States very rapidly. This class taught me the basics of how online classes are taught. It also taught about all the additional components that online instructors have to be aware of when teaching online classes. I was surprised at how many things they have to be watching out for; academic honesty, plagiarism, copyright are just a few that seem like they would take up quite an additional amount of time to the normal planning of lessons. In addition, they must create additional test bank questions so that students will not all get the same test items to relieve the instructor of fewer possibilities for academic dishonesty. I feel that I have had a chance to get to know my instructors pretty well in all the online classes I have taken. Data shows that academic dishonesty usually happens contrary to what you might think. A lot of it has to do with the communication part that is very important in online classes. The teacher needs to give feedback to student assignments, to discussion forums, along with answering emails from students. Another thing that I found very important for online classes is that many of the instructional strategies that you use in a face-to-face classroom, can easily be taught in online classrooms with all the new Web 2.0 tools that are now available. In conclusion, I want to state that I really enjoyed this class. I enjoyed learning about all the different segments that an online instructor must juggle while teaching online classes. This class really helped me better understand our own online instructor’s roles that he/she must fulfill. This class also helped me clarify my thoughts on teaching online classes myself. Thank you Amy Vitala, for a great summer session, I really enjoyed this class! If I was to design online learning without access to an LMS, I imagine I’d use Weebly as first choice and Blogger as second choice. Weebly is my first choice because I am most familiar with it having used it for a good six months now on a regular basis. It is easy to navigate once you learn the ropes. I love the ease of inserting audio, video, graphics on the different templates. The templates that are available are given to you as a visual to choose from. I think that feature will be appealing to my students. I also like the feature of the “assignment page” on Weebly. It is similar to a Dropbox site so students can attach any assignments that do not need to be posted on the blog. I’m a little concerned about the calendar, syllabus, and content feature that would have to be posted. I guess that when I post that information at the beginning of the semester, the students will always be able to go back to those links in the archives from earlier posts. I now appreciate the LMS system that KSU uses even more after trying to figure out how I would conduct a class like ours online with one. Blogger would be my second choice again because of the ease of using it. It seems like it would be easy to use for both the students and the online teacher. It does not have the assignment drop box feature that the Weebly has and I think that would be a very helpful additive for any online teacher. The main advantages of using an LMS system is that it is already configured specifically for online classes for the institution that you are teaching at. That would also be the main disadvantage of having to create an online class using Weebly. Having to create an online class on Weebly would definitely take a lot of time playing with all the different ways that you could set it up. The advantage of using the Weebly is that it is a Web2.0 tool which is allowing the students to advance their 21st Century skills which will only be a plus for their futures. I've attached a copy of the "assignment page" that can be used with an online class. Thank you, your assignment has been sent Building a community with your online class begins from the very first day. I can imagine the concern that many online students would face as they prepare to begin an online class. Initially, they may not even be thinking about their peers but more how they’ll navigate the LMS to figure everything out. Once that is taken care of, they will soon realize that the other students taking this class with them really will be classmates just as in a F2F class. As the instructor, I’d begin by posting the first discussion assignment, which will be for them to write a short post that describes themselves. This will be a graded assignment and four to five responses to peers will be mandatory. By commenting on four to five peers, that will begin to build the sense of community that I want to establish for this new online class. I will make sure that I add a comment into the discussions here and there so they know that I’m involved but not responding to each post. Next, I will make the normal phone call home to have a quick chat with parents regarding the class and ask if there are any concerns or questions. This begins to build that community with the parents as well. I want them to feel comfortable asking me questions throughout the class if needed. After the first discussion assignment, I will have already had them print out the syllabus and gone over the material, this will precede the second discussion assignment which again asks the students to write a post discussing course goals that they have set for themselves and/or any concerns they have about being able to achieve the goals along with any other concerns. Again, they will have to respond to peers but this time only two to three peer responses will be required. This too will be a graded assignment. By this time, I’m assuming that the sense of trust is starting to build and they will realize they are all in this together. It’s best if they support each other in order for them to make friends as they will be collaborating with each other to solve problems and answer questions later in the class. I will use the same “Ask the Professor” type of discussion forum that will be ongoing through the semester. I will encourage them to use it because usually no question is a “dumb” question. They will not realize how many other people they are helping when they ask their question. I would also like to create a separate discussion forum for the students to share informal conversations that can also be ongoing throughout the course. I will make sure to define the purpose of it as well as set rules for appropriate behavior. I think they will like that even though they all may have their own social networks that they belong to, this may be convenient when they are on the LMS. My last strategy that I’d use would be having a WIMBA/ELLUMINATE session where the students can collaborate on a basic activity since this would be their first one as a class. This live session may be class related or maybe not as again, this will be a new activity to them and they will have to build that sense of community doing this live compared to doing it asynchronously. I believe all of these strategies are ones that I would use with my online students. Building a sense of community will not happen overnight as the students need a chance to build that trust first. Once they’ve replied to each other in an encouraging method, they will begin to build trust. They will see that overall, everyone in the class is in this class to learn and collaborate with their peers to achieve the goals of the class. Learning Objective:ELACC1W1: Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or the name of the book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure. Teacher Assignment:I may give an assignment having the students write an opinion piece about pets. After having the student listen to a book online called, “The Best Pet”. (This book tells about all the fun you can have with pets, along with stating the responsibilities that pets require.) I would ask them which pet they think is best? Their writing would include their opinion on which pet is best, next it would give at least three supporting reasons, and then have a closing sentence at the end. Sample Response: Sam Jones I think the best pet for me would be a fish. Fish are nice pets because they do not make noise like dogs or cats. I do not have to clean up their messes when they go to the bathroom like I would have to with cats and dogs. I always know where they are when I want to watch or enjoy them. They would never bite or scratch me because fish don’t do that. A fish is a calm animal and very relaxing to watch. That is why I think a fish is the best pet for me. Teacher Feedback Sam, I really like your opinion writing sample. I can see why you think that a fish would be a good pet for you. Some people like to take their dogs outside to play fetch with them or cuddle with them to watch tv. If those things are not of interest to you, then I can see why you would prefer a fish. They do make good pets for people who do not want to interact with their pets a lot. You did a good job in your writing. You had a good intro sentence, nice supporting details, and a closure that reinforced your introductory sentence. This module covered an often "hot" topic. Cheating is something that has happened in the face-to-face class and will inevitable happen in the online class as well. As instructors, it is our responsibility to be aware, just like in the face-to-face classroom. In my face-to-face classroom, it is pretty easy to tell if a student is cheating due to the fact that I teach first grade. I’m not saying that it never happens in first grade, I’m just saying that it is pretty obvious as they stick out like a sore thumb. Things would be different in the online classroom. Teachers have think in different terms since they cannot actually see the student completing the assessment/assignment. They have to use many of the strategies that were provided to us by John Krutesch in his Late Night Show presentation and by Cizek in our readings. I believe there are many techniques that I would use to help prevent cheating if I was teaching an online class. (I’ll assume I’m using these techniques for high school or college students since at this time, few first graders take online classes.) These techniques include: a) I would provide an academic honesty policy and I’d require them to sign it, reminding them of the consequences if cheating occurs. b) I would provide clear statements and expectations on my syllabus. c) I would make sure the students knew they had to have more than one place to do online work so they can’t use technology issues as an excuse to do their work. d) I would make sure I use varied assessments to assess the students. Online multiple choice, true/false, yes/no types of questions are easier to hack into for that advanced computer student. Varied assessments could include: reflective journals, peer assessments, case studies,synchronous and asynchronous discussions, self-assessments, and role playing. e) I would make sure to print my grade book weekly to make sure that isn’t getting hacked. f) I would keep my tests on the server and not on my computer, giving less chance for anyone to get into my computer. g) I'd create a pool of questions so the computer could randomize the tests for the online test takers, limiting the chance for anyone to get the same test. h h) I’d have a tricky password to make it difficult for hackers. i) I’d also be aware of the LOAD that I’m putting on students, that could encourage cheating. (I don’t want to make it too easy or too hard. I also don’t want to smother them with BUSY work.) I was not able to complete the cheatability rubric that was on our syllabus but looked up some others online to see what they were about. I got the jest of them through the online sample that Teresa Tidwell posted. The presentations were quite helpful on this topic as they taught us how not to encourage cheating. They showed us the most common excuses used when cheating. It showed us ways to technology is exploited so we could be more aware of it. Online Teaching just became a little more overwhelming if I would really need to do all of these things and more to create an effective class with limited chances for cheating. The presentations also told us the steps to complete if we did suspect cheating. You need to: consult your academic policy, have proof, document evidence, (take screenshots if possible), write detailed notes, contact parents and use an even tone and make sure to stick to the facts, and last follow school policy as far as consequences along with documenting the call in the communication log. |
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