Week 6 Reflection

This week started the serious work and reflection on my final project. I decided to utilize Weebly to put together the project since I am most familiar with it. I haven't gotten very far yet, but I am starting to see how it is coming together. It is amazing how much work goes into designing just one module! I really had no idea just how much work and thought was involved.

This week's readings got me thinking about the types of assessments, and really, the type of course I want to have. The constructivist model seems so beneficial for not only my future online courses, but also my current F2F classrooms. The strong emphasis on project based learning, real world problem solving, connections, collaboration, and students taking an active role in their learning all makes sense to me. Reading these articles helped me focus my final project a little more and make my assessments more meaningful and specific.

I enjoyed trying a new tool for my pre-course survey. I am used to Google Forms for these types of surveys, but I was impressed with everything CreateSurvey had to offer. It was easy to use and had many different options. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to come up with 10 different questions. However, after solidifying my objectives and purpose for the survey the questions just started to flow. Below is a link to my survey for an online US History Course.

Click here for the survey

Week 5 Reflection

It was nice to take a little bit of a breath this week without the group project. I can definitely see why every online course needs a healthy mixture of group assessments and individual learning weeks. Both are so important! So, I started the week working on solidifying my four learning objectives I will use in my final project. I know there will still be some tweaking along the way, but I feel that I have learned how to write effective objectives through the various activities in this course. At first I though that the taxonomy table was a little bit much and I didn't quite understand the point of it. HOWEVER, I now completely understand how valuable it can be. When I started creating activities and matching them up with the Bloom's verbs, it started to completely transform my learning objectives. It helped to make the objective more specific, measurable and meaningful. It was a great learning experience for me and I am starting to gain more confidence in my ability to create objectives and activities for an online module.

I also gained powerful insight, ideas and feedback from my peers this week. It was nice to compare my interpretation of the assignment with my peers and use that information to change and add to my own project. For example, I hadn't thought about adding an overall goal for the module until I saw one of my classmates add it to hers - now it just seems so obvious! Additionally, I learned a lot about rubrics. Honestly in my current classes I do a lot of checklists and outlines instead of formal rubrics so this felt a bit new to me. I learned about what I wanted to include in my rubric by providing feedback to my classmates rubrics. It was interesting how everyone had a different layout.

Week 4 Reflection

This week was more intense and time consuming than I thought it would be. As I mentioned last week, I was very nervous about how this group project would play out and if we would be able to pull a good toolbox together in time. However, I was so impressed with my group members and grateful everyone worked hard to put together an awesome project. Everyone was so easy going and open minded about decisions and topics for the project. Everyone seemed to work to meet a high standard and I was happy to see there were no disagreements or real conflicts between our group and everyone met the time schedule. It showed me that larger online group projects can be done! I am interested in trying this assessment process with my own students. I think it would teach my students that effective communication, adaptability, and time management are essential for these types of activities.

Additionally, this project introduced me to online assessment tools that I had never even heard of. One of my group members wrote about the tool Voki. I had actually heard of this, but I never knew it was so easy to use and all of the possible uses it could have. Additionally, I was excited to read about the tools Team Grover presented in their toolbox. The tools Our Story and Vyew were of particular interest to me and I plan to incorporate these tools into my current classrooms.

Finally, this project allowed me to dig a little deeper into a tool that I am already passionate about - Blogger. It forced me to do research about this tool and got me even more excited to use it with my students. In my research, I found so many helpful resources and sites that I bookmarked to help me with this implementation. Also, when the other team was asking questions in the discussion board, one classmate asked me if all student blogs had to be public. Originally I thought that there was no way to make blogs private, but when I looked into I realized it was possible. It was nice to learn more about this tool through this project.

Here is a link to our group toolbox - Team Elmo Toolbox

Learning Objective Concept Map

This week I started brainstorming the objectives I would use in my future online math course. It was interesting to think about the different objectives and activities I would incorporate into an online module. It was different for me because I didn't realize how different it would be to plan for a week long module versus a day or two lesson.

Attached you will find my final concept map for an online algebra course. The topic covers different objects to help students understanding ratios, proportions and percents. I decided to use Popplet to create my map. You can view my concept map below.

Week 3 Reflection

Week three started with a little more anxiety because a group midterm project was introduced. I've only done one other group online project and it was a partner project. I was very nervous because the project for this class involves working with three other people. I started noticing pretty quick that it was going to be difficult to coordinate time schedules and communication with that many people online. When I saw that not everyone was responding through email I decided to set up a Google Doc and put the link on the discussion group section. In the end our group decided that email was the best way to communicate so I hope we can get everything we need accomplished in time. I tend to like to get things done quickly so I don't have to worry about it, so I know this project might take some patience.

I had a large "a-ha" moment while working on my concept map learning objectives. I was very unsure when I originally submitted the map, so I was grateful to have a second chance. I realized the importance of the ABCD method of writing learning objectives. This method really makes sense and makes the rest of the lesson planning easier and more focused. Inadvertently I learned the importance of feedback in an online course. In the past I have felt a little alone when working on weekly modules. However, this week with the audio feedback that I received, I realized that I really want to incorporate this type of feedback in my own future online courses.