I really enjoyed Mariette’s post. She has had great experiences that I want to remember. She wrote,

When I was an administrator of an elementary school I found that staff meetings were difficult to get full attendance due to people’s busy schedule.  So, I decided to try to hold them online.  It was a great success!  I would post discussion issues and then allow three days for a response.  I found that everyone had a voice…..unlike a traditional staff meeting where only a few spoke.  Better decisions were made because people had time to think and weigh out the possibilities.  Staff liked it as they could fit it into their schedule.

My ideas were a spin-off from this post.

1. The principal could set up a forum to ask the Heads of Departments for their input. This would provide insight into other colleagues’ thinking and promote collaboration.

2. My department meet 4 days a week for an hour to collaborate, share student samples, and discuss various strategies. I think having an online forum for discussion of strategies and collaboration would be a great option for us because either ideas are forgotten or the time factor creeps in throughout the week.

In the reading, I see that this group was actually doing the recommendations put forth in the study: we were using the subject line to guide the discussion and our instructor continuously provided feedback to us in which we could use as a model for our own responses.

This online course matched my need to learn about assessments. It is so good to have a deeper understanding about the non-traditional types of assessment.  These types of assessments definitely suit my style of teaching. Making sure the objective and assessment is known before the actual teaching is extremely purposeful and appeals to me wholeheartedly.

What a week! The Final Project Assessment was time-consuming. I still have to add and change a few things, but the bulk of it was completed. Is this what it takes to create an online course!? I have a lot of work ahead of me. And yes, I do believe that putting the effort into creating an online course will take time, but  student learning will be phenomenal.

This week was my worst week for the course. I did not have the time to delve into the discussions as I wanted. However, I was able to read many of the posts and it looks like many of us already cybercoach. We just didn’t know that there was a name for it. Well at least I did not know. It’s a powerful strategy to use with students. Not only do students develop motivation to achieve quality work, but the increase their confidence level when they are able to observe their work improving from the feedback.

Constructivism has been moving steadily into the realm of everyday teaching for years now. I remember being in university learning about this theory for the first time and thinking what a novelty for students to be given the chance to construct their own knowledge with new material via their prior knowledge and past experiences. I still feel that way. E-learning is a very good avenue to practice being a constructivist because many of the tools that are used in this environment allows for student perspective. I had to quote myself from the discussion this week because I really feel that constructivism practiced around the world will help us to respect various views.

I love that fact that when constructivism is practiced in the online class, the community of learners develops an appreciation for “multiple perspectives”. This goes so much deeper than learning in an online environment. This appreciation will help this world to become more united.

I am not pleased with the survey that I created as a pre-survey for an online French class –  Click here to take survey. It didn’t flow the  way I wanted it to. I just could not write the questions in a warm way. I am a very direct, to the point person. Say what you mean or want. Don’t beat around the bush! Spit it out! Hence my dilemma.

I am a learner who must process the information I read for a while. Then all of a sudden all of these ideas come into my head and I start writing. This week, I read the materials, but it took until Friday for me to process Blooms in this perspective, understand exactly what is required for the Final and know what to put in the Assessment taxonomy table.  I had fun once I finally began to write. I chunked together second and third year work to create a new module – daily routines and healthy lifestyles which of course are linked very closely together.

Bloom’s Taxonomy has been modified to a clearer version which I used for this week’s task. I found a PowerPoint that I had had years ago.

The feedback from my discussion was very helpful:

1.       Make sure all students have a microphone, whether it is internal or external hardware.

• They have online audio testing within some software like audacity and skype.

2.       Audacity is good, which I have only used for listenings, but will try to incorporate it in recorded conversational tasks.

3.       Weekly assessments (audio or video) to put in e-portfolio

4.       Jing

• captures audio presentations.  Jing allows you to record your screen actions and voice.
• Example:  5 minute voice and PowerPoint presentation to introduce oneself

5.      Livemocha http://www.livemocha.com/

• online learning community to meet people with similar language interest.
• I used this site last year, but never thought to view it as tool for my students.

I have been teaching French for 10 years, but I want to shift into being a technology resource for teachers. My focus needs to switch now, from French to Technology Integration Support. The Assessment Taxonomy stimulated me to think about creating a course or PD workshops for teachers throughout the year to help to guide them to the many tools on the internet. I must begin planning for this. It is very much needed now in my school.

Working in this group with Evan Abbey and Michelle Hill was good. There was minimal stress in this group. We all went about doing our part. Both of them seemed to be calm individuals. Michelle took the lead. She made sure we were on track for everything. I thank you, Michelle. Evan provided me with some feedback which made me feel more confident about producing quality work. I am grateful to him for that. Working with Google Docs, we were able to edit drafts and the others were able to see it when it was saved. That was “cool”.

Here is the final product – AssessmentToolboxMidterm[1]

Teamwork always produces better quality products. Collaboration is the key to a deepened understanding of both process and content.

This young boy seemed so full of vitality and is open to all people that visit his country because he has a purpose for knowing other languages – making a living.

One of those reasons is that instructors believe peer to peer collaboration will be lost. Of course, this program is teaching us quite the opposite – collaboration is even more embedded in online learning than f2f classes.  Michelle’s motto that I would like to adopt is “…be the best example of an interactive, engaged classroom as you can be. Try to strive for great results from students on assessment.  It is difficult to argue with assessment data and student evaluations that show that online classes are working.”

Higher level learning is a given in well crafted online courses. The Web 2.0 tools are naturally geared toward high level assessment and tasks.  

Now e-books was an interesting topic – and what a blessing for students who have to purchase their own books. As for the instructor – to be able to create a custom textbook (e-book) to supplement the course is a fantastic concept.  I’m just now being introduced to the Kindle, although I’m still partial to my paperbacks!

I want more experience with Moodle. In one thread of discussion, Moodle seems like a winner as far as “one stop shopping”. It has most Web 2.0 tools built in: surveys, discussions, glossary, quizzes, wikis, and blogs. My MOE is testing it slowly (one person is testing it!!).

Some notable sites to remember are wordle, glogster, and wallwisher.

The blog took up most of my time this week. I did not post and join in the rich discussions until the weekend. Organisation is so key in these online courses, that once you are thrown off course, it is difficult to attain that rhythm again.

The Blog
Links I want to remember: blog basics.

I used edublog to house my blog. It took me a long time to figure out what goes on the side panel. What is a page? Why use pages in the first place? I still am unsure of how that works. I believe it is to showcase my assignments for the e-portfolio, like tab buttons on a webpage, which I still prefer to use.

The Discussions
So rich this week. I like how Datta Kaur started us off with a real situation to try to solve or suggest ways to help. All of the ideas that were stated were good: before and after school library use, teen centers, church groups, flexible school hours to incorporate computer use…… The anger and passion everyone who posted showed about the inequities of computer access, really showed me the level of sensitivity of the subject.

One post in particular that I remember was Mariette’s because of such honesty on her part. She said that she had breakthrough – to actually show her students the rubric. I loved that because I know many teachers when I first started teaching did the same thing. I did. I used them but never showed them to students.

The e-portfolio blog in an English class was a great idea. This led to another discussion about students having a blog for each of their classes versus one blog with all their classes posted for reflection. Evan stated that having a blog for one particular class has no authentic audience. If the blog was going to be used to find a job or enter a university, then the authenticity would be there. Monique had a great point as well – that with one blog for all classes, teachers can see the whole person, not just the math student or the science student.

Judith started the discussion on blogs as an alternative to mainstream media. The discussion that ensued described how blogs should be taken with a grain of salt; they are people’s subjectivity and with that come the issue of the diminishing importance of factual data. Making sure students are developing with a critical eye to discern fact from subjectivity is crucial.

I liked one of Michelle’s suggestions, which was to use it to communicate with parents and an e-portfolio would become a “great artifact for the course or their high school career, but also a communication tool for the student/parent connection.” (Michelle Hill, 2 Oct 2010).

As you can see, this class has invaluable experience and ideas. I am glad to be a part of this group and am learning from this all the time.

Well, I have always chosen courses that had nothing to do with assessment. I thought it to be a lot of numbers and data that was boring and confusing. However, as I grow in my knowledge of how students learn and how data analysis works, assessment has become an important part of directing my teaching. So, I’m completely smitten with assessment now and want to truly understand the concept.

Gone are the days where creating a paper test is sufficient for our students. Yes, it still has it’s place but as I read more and more about alternative assessments, I find that we as teachers, whether classroom or online, must do some individual investigation about ways we can assess our students to understand them more.

In module one, we were introduced to a types of assessments that I was not comfortable with or even considered to be assessments: surveys, online partner interviews, wikis. I enjoyed the online partner interview and could immediately see the use in my classes. Click here to read the interviews about me by Monique Jordan and Judith Satkiewicz and the one that I wrote on an energetic, busy lady named Monique Jordan.

The survey has many uses – one of them being a  portal into the thinking of an individual in order to modify teaching to their interests, learning styles, skill level, etc. Another more powerful use is to help students reflect and gain knowledge about their own learning styles.

The week’s discussions led to several knowledgeable people posting various sites to explore – very interesting and fun to do when there is time in your life. I wish I could spend a whole day just browsing sites….

Sites:

1. Hot Potatoes – with a Foreign Language example
2. Google Docs
3. Survey Monkey
4. Zoomerang
5. Quia
6. Voicethread
7. wiki example – Jason’s example
8. wiki example – the alphabet
9. e-pals
10. TV5 – French TV site
    

PD time:

• Authentic Intellectual Work (AIW) - Teacher collaboration about student assessment, product, task improvement, by using a rubric to guide the process.
• Online book – wiki used for collaboration

The most interesting realisation made so far for me, is that formative assessment can be so creative. I knew it was significant, but that there are several ways to assess, without pen to paper or observations, was a “light-bulb” moment for me.

I am looking forward to experiencing more websites and software that can add to the growing repertoire of assessment tools and assessments.

With all of the social networking sites, my school has blocked ALL of them with websense. Each time I try out what we are learning in class, I must first make sure that site is not blocked. The IT department isn’t liking me very much lately! Pity! Of course the network in a high school has to be secured and safe for student use, but there will be a time when it will have to be updated to allow these sites to be freely visited and used by the school population. Does anyone else have these issues?