Final Project Thoughts

Currently I am not teaching any online classes. I teach Technology Education to middle school students in a program that has both vocational units (woods, metals, problem solving, electricity, and manufacturing) and technological units which consists mainly of students using different technologies to complete projects in the above listed areas.

For my final project I plan to develop an Exploring Technology class for middle school students. I plan to incorporate learning tools that we have been using in this class. Developing the whole course would be a little overwhelming so my plan is to develop some different learning units and list a possible assignment with each.

Where I am at in my planning is to have students collaborate using a wiki to complete an assignment on web site authenticity and prepare a presentation in Google Docs for a final product. I would also like to include Internet safety and fair use as part of this unit.

The next unit I plan to develop is a unit on blogging. I would like to develop a geo-caching assignment for students and have them post information on their experiences using a GPS to locate geocaches.

As part of the Exploring Technology class student will also use Zoomerang or Surveymonkey to collect data and report their individual findings.

Finally I plan to use a type of course tracking software to develop an online class outline that students will be asked to follow. If anyone has suggestions on what might work best for this I would appreciate the recommendation.

I have started developing objectives for this course but they are not in a final format that I feel comfortable posting at this point.

If anyone has suggestions on how to improve this course I will happily take input.

Pre Course Survey

During this weeks learning module we were asked to develop an online pre course survey. I plan to use this survey as part of my final project. For this reason my survey audience is middle school students taking an exploring technology course. To take my survey please click here.

Week 5 Reflection

During this weeks module we reviewed the different levels of learning associated with Bloom’s Taxonomy. As an educator I am familiar with Bloom and studied levels of learning as an undergraduate and learning levels are usually part of our teacher in services. As we saw this week people have different levels of understanding when it comes to Bloom and also different interpretations of how the different levels fit activities. It was a good opportunity to see how other people evaluated activities and also a good review of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Here is a link to my evaluations of the Casey Journalism Course and how the activities fit different levels of learning.

The Casey course had a lot of good activities, but was not clearly organized which made evaluating difficult. Many of the activities we analyzed overlapped levels of learning. One question I posed to this overlap was this “Was the goal of the activities to allow students to choose a thread of an activity that was challenging to them specifically – thus challenging all learners – or were the assessments designed to fit specific levels?”

Finally this week our final project appeared on the horizon. When I finally found the final project description my major concern is that I do not currently teach an online class and I don’t really know what I would want to teach online. Without a end goal in mind completing this project will be difficult. The project itself seems valuable and will help to improve online classes, but until I have a direction I feel stuck.

Mid Term Project Links

Here is the link to our groups collaboration on Google Docs.

By following this link you will be able to view our final product.

Week 4 Reflection

This week the majority of our efforts were focused on our group midterm project. Our midterm project was a jigsaw research activity. The topic of our search was assessment tools. Our group primarily used email and Google Docs to complete our project. Google Docs worked well for us as a communication tool. Within our group members used different font colors and styles to set information apart during collaboration.

My piece of the assignment was to research Zoomerang an online survey creator. Zoomerang seems to be a powerful survey (even the free version) tool that offers many upgrades. Zoomerang can be used to gather background information on students, organize end of course feedback, and plan and organize events.

Our class discussion this week was started by asking a question about the groups feelings on group grades. As I posted collaboration is important, but when the final product is all that is being evaluated all factors are not taken into consideration. Group projects also do not assess an individuals grasp of content.

Week 3 Reflection

During Module 3 we spent time working with concept maps which is a great way to get students to plan out their work. I have not used Inspiration for quite some time so this was a good refresher for me and as someone stated in their postings there have been some great updates made to make the program run smoother.

The main discussion topic for this week was on emerging technologies and their impact on the field of education. This article was written in 2004 and many of the “emerging” technologies are now commonplace showing the speed of advancement in the area of technology. The list of web based tools that are available to educators did show the opportunities for online educators to improve pedagogy in their instruction.

Finally during this module we were assigned groups to work on our midterm projects. Our group decided to use Google Docs as a main method for communication. Our doc is set up and our topics are decided.

Concept Mapping

Example of Concept Mapping Using Inspiration

Module 2 Reflective Journal

During this weeks learning module we explored the benefits of using a blog as an assessment tool. During this investigation we learned exactly what a blog is and how it can be used as well as discussed advantages and disadvantages of blogs in education.
I use blogs for both personal and professional reasons and feel comfortable with the technology.
These last 2 weeks have been absolutely insane at work, and I feel that I have been slow to post and respond, but with any kind of luck I will have more time to stay on top of posts in the weeks to come. I have read through this weeks discussion threads but have not had an opportunity to comment yet.
After reading through discussion threads and briefly looking at classmate’s blogs I am excited to learn from others and to have discussions on topics we are faced with as educators and innovators.

Jake @ Hartford

Module 2 Notes from Reading

One quick thought about blogs as an assessment tool is from the article "Edublogs as an Online Assessment Tool" was that the author stated that an assessment is a systematic on-going interactive process. With respect to this statement a blog is a perfect tool for assessing student learning. A blog would keep a record and provide documentation of student growth throughout a class.

After reading the article “Benefits of Cooperative Learning in Weblog Networks” advantages that I found to using blogs were that blogs are a convenient communication tool for students, students have an opportunity to develop well thought out responses, and that class blogs provide a relatively safe forum to receive feedback on their work. Disadvantages that I saw with the use of blogs as an assessment tool are the level of comfort and availability with the required technology needed and the format in which students write and comment in blogs.

Using blogs as an assessment tool provides learners the opportunity to learn when it is convenient for them. With content and information always available learners are able to interact whenever possible. Blogs also provide learners an opportunity to reflect on questions and comments posted to develop more in depth answers to questions. Finally class blogs provide learners an opportunity to get constructive criticism on their work. When an instructor monitors student posting as part of the class learners are more contentious about the comments and feedback they provide.

One disadvantage of using a blog as an assessment tool is the level of comfort students have with technology. Although a blog is a fairly simple online tool learners who are not comfortable with new technology might be hesitant to use this type of forum. Also the advantage of convenience could be lost for learners who do not have unlimited access to the technology required to complete assignments. Another disadvantage that I have seen with the use of blogs as an assessment tool that was not mentioned in the article is the lack of formal writing. I have seen younger learners post good information that was lost or ignored due to the fact it was posted in an instant messenger format.