I checked out Wikibooks as our science department is in the middle of planning to create some open source information to provide to our online science students. We are in the research and discussion stage though I really think that a creating our own wiki resource is a great option.


So this week was very relevant to one of our science department goals is for this year. We have a goal to explore creating some open source materials for our online course. We have some classes that use text books and others that use the online information provided by our partner. The main issue with the information provided is that it is not as comprehensive as we would like and is currently supplied in a very rigid structure. Assignments and activities are inbeded into the online source. Which makes it very difficult to adjust or modify the curriculum as we would wish.

It looks to me like we can start to collaborate on producing such an online source by using a wiki. I checked out the online text book project at Wikibooks which is a web wide effort to do the same. I specifically looked at the biology section and found that it was started but just barely. There are other such movements that we are looking into as well as just creating our own information as well.

As a department we have all agreed philosophically that the information should be open source and available to all. This does bring up the interesting fact that with the open enrollment system we could very well be contributing to the success of other online schools in the near future, who under the current system are in direct competition for our potential students. With the current capped enrollment system in place this could be potentially fatal to our endeavor.

Week 1 Ced 0535 Opportunity Lost?

I found the bookBlogs Wikis, Podcasts and other powerful tools for classrooms to be a very exciting read. I really got caught up in looking forward to the possibilities described in the read/write web. We have used some of those tools in this class effectively. My first thought was how difficult incorporating these tools into a face to face class would be and then how difficult it would be to incorporate these tools in to the rigid system we have in my online environment. Richardson's advice to start by using the web tools to learn about and develop your own passion seems to be great advice. it is nice that we have the added advantage to explore them in our grad class but I also feel that the tools will be most useful to me professionally in the context of organizing, building and communicating online materials with my science department. We have established a delicious group were we share bookmarked web pages. We also cooperatively work on projects using Google docs.



It is interesting how different districts are reacting to the changes taking place. The school district of Arrowhead moved this year to allow the students to use their cell phones throughout the school day and some teachers have encouraged their use in class. My son downloaded a Spanish English Dictionary on to his cell phone for use in class. While the school district of Waukesha has banned teacher participation in online social networks such as face book and twitter and blogs. What are your thoughts on this topic?


Students are currently learning how to interact in these environment on there own, with very little guidance. Wouldn't it be beneficial to give students experience in using these tools productively? Of course the fear of their misuse can out way the opportunities . Information security and privacy issues is one area that we need to address. Sooner better than later as it seems opportunities are being lost.

Week 5

I decided to create my Pecha Kucha on the 5-2 monster defense that I have coached and played in during high school. I had countless documents that I had put together over the years that I had used as informational packets for my assistant coaches and as a way of developing game plans. It was very enjoyable going through the schemes and developing a basic presentation. I found the activity to be very time consuming and the timing on the voice thread to be an obstacle. It would only start counting down the 20 seconds for each slide after you finished the voice over. So I had to time my speaking to fit in a 19 second window. I look forward to seeing how everyone did, though I am sure Kara will wreck the curve.

In conclusion is was interesting to use the rubric for the rubric assignment.

CYA,

Terry

Lesson 4

As exciting as the lesson we are learning are I am experiencing some very mixed emotions. I think we are learning some useful and engaging tools which would work very well to both deliver knowledge and engagement to my online students but the structure of my work is slowly changing from an online educational facilitator to a grading monkey.

We seem to be moving away from control over content, curriculum and delivery to that of a grader of work. This is very depressing when one stops to consider the incredible possibilities that are being developed an exist right now.

I really enjoyed the Animoto production and I can see the benefit of using voice threads in my online teaching. Even though I did spend an extraordinary amount of time on the work over the last six weeks I have fallen behind.

I am also a bit discouraged that my blog has not generated much feed back as I have endeavored to cover topics that I would like to know my classmates opinions on.

Though no reflection I have been late in posting the last view blogs and everyone is quite busy. So to sum up. Busy, enjoying learning the new tools, depressed about not being able to use them in my class, excited I got to produce the animoto for my vacation just love it.

Week 3 blog,

Though I must confess this is week 4, even so it is late in week 4 and with that I should be working on my online class Unit 3 rewrite as the deadline for getting those revision in is approaching quickly. I have continued to take pictures every day but have come to the conclusion that I have difficulty with keeping to a daily schedule. As I said though I have consistently taken pictures each day just as I have consistently worked out each day I have not loaded the pictures daily or logged my work out time on the fitness programs website even though they would reward me with several hundred dollars for doing so at the end of the year.

Is this just a classic case of procrastination? This is not a helpful strategy but nonetheless it persists. It usually does not originate from laziness as I illustrate by the fact that I do work out each day and that I have completed the reading and viewed the provided and recommended resources. With that said.

I have spent two weeks simplifying my presentations for my online classes and I believe it has been helpful. I think the presentations are less hurried and more targeted, which helps us both. The difficulty with this approach is that I do spend more time producing a quality presentation and even more time producing a supportive informational handout. Though much more time consuming it is also very beneficial to my students. I have in the past created supportive resources such as tutorial power points, and suggested websites. Now I am creating a document for each section that has all this information in one location.

In fact I think it will also help our science department. There currently is a gap that is perceived by the instructors to be growing between our educational partner and the districts iQ staff. In the past the curriculum being provided was weak and obviously insufficient for our needs. The science department (and others as well) was united in the vision of online learning to include differentiated learning and differentiated assessment and we thought that the online environment was uniquely qualified to deliver this flexibility.

As so the science department created and supported our own curriculum. The rub came this year when our partner decided to up their game and produced a new line of curriculum. This was predicted to be a good thing a year ago when we discussed with them what our vision for the curriculum was. This included many of the applications and educational tools we have been discussing in this class. The disappointment came in the form of a very inflexible and poor quality curriculum that we were forced to actually use. They would no-longer load our saved courses that we had previously produced. .Which brings us to this school year. Well actually we have to go back to January when they had us review the new course and let them know if we wished to use the new course or continue to use our created course work. We communicated to them that there were many difficulties with using their curriculum and would be using our own. Now flash to 4 days four days before school starts. We were told a decision was made to go with only the new courses. To be far when 4 days prior to the beginning of the school year they loaded their version of biology and we again notified them that the curriculum had severe problems with the content they agreed to have us (me) work with their developers to correct the major issues. The have been very helpful in making the changes I have suggested and we continue to assist them in producing a workable course.

To complete the thought and bring this back to the beginning, I believe by producing the supportive material handouts or links we can build a online open source resource for our students that can complement and fill in the curriculum while giving us flexibility and the ability to insert our curriculum into the provided curriculum. We can remove portion we do not wish to use and supplement with our own as is the case with a face to face teacher.

More on this next week, ok this weekend.

Weeek 2 digital story telling

This week I wrote specifically about being creative, and then about how non-creative I am with my presentations. I create a presentation for each of my online classes once a week. That is roughly 80 presentation a semester. At this point my process has been to take last years power point look it over and add to it. Looking back this process has created some long boring and confusing presentations. I am very excited about taking a new and more creative approach to the process of creating my presentations. For one thing I have always felt compelled to include quite a bit of detail to my presentation as many of my students would be downloading the power point and using it a their main information source. This meant that I overloaded my in person presentation. Now I will create detailed handouts with references and links included for my students to access online. I will then attempt to create interesting interactive experiences for my synchrounous presentations. This will be better for my students and more fun for me as well. I can't wait to start doodling on those legal pads.

Week one of Digital storytelling

So I was busy telling stories last weekend using a power point put together by my school principal. The presentation itself turned out to be very effective, much hand shaking and thank you's afterward nice comments from colleague and calls to the office regarding the fine presentation. Only thing is the internet did not work at the presentation so I had to wing most of the presentation. After reading the articles and Presentation Zen this week I realized that the success of the presentation was due to the simplicity of the slide presentation. If it were full of details about what they were going to see when we all logged in to the website they would surely have met with great disappointment. Instead I related the story of how I teach my class and what role the student and parents have in the learning process. It was helpful to have them see some screen shots as well (I ran to Starbucks and quickly saved some screen shots to include in the power point) I was able to show them that the important information I was telling them could be found in four different areas and that there was plenty of support at the start an during the school year for their student and parent as well. I am going back tomorrow for a second round and hope to use some of what I have learned for the presentations tomorrow. I will let you know how it goes.