Sharing & Learning

Hurray – it is August 7, 2009 – the final day of the class.  I love to learn and I’ve learned “a ton” in this class so I’m happy.  I don’t think I have put as many hours into a course since working on my Master’s thesis.  I was thinking that it would be interesting to compare the number of hours a student puts into an online course to the number of hours spent in activities in a f2f course in which the student is fully engaged.  In an on line course a student must be fully engaged 100% of the time working on the course – there simply is no way around that.  In a f2f course, after subtracting the time spent traveling to & from the class, time spent off-track (such as when you are making a shopping list rather than listening to a lecture) and transition times (breaks, energizers) the total actually spent fully engaged in the learning process I’m guessing is going to be significantly less than in the on-line environment.  I’m sure there has been research done on this, which I will look up – later.

Last night I worked for three unsuccessful hours trying to figure how how to create pages with my favorite readings.  I tried creating links, cut and pasting into posts, and many other process but simply couldn’t get it.  I got files into the media section but that’s where they stayed.  So, at 1:30 a.m. today I decided to be content knowing that they are in my computer documents folder so I can easily access them in the future.   Here is the list of the readings I want to keep handy:

• Jigsaw
• Think Pair Share
• Concept Mapping Case Study
• Discourse Analysis

With this final post I complete the course with much appreciation and respect to Datta and my fellow classmates who have been my guides at the side as I began my new journey in life – the world of on line instruction.

Ruth

August 2009

I just had to look at my phone to see if it was Tuesday or Wednesday!  I have been concentrating so hard on the development of my E-Portfolio and the Final Project in the assessment class that I can’t even remember what day it is – oh boy!  I am finding the development of my E-Portfolio very useful.  In the Assessment class we developed a blog at the beginning of the course which accomplishes the same as the E-Portfolio.  The blog is helpful because adding posts along the way is more time-efficient.  On the other hand, at this point in time (at the end of the class) laying out all the materials and reflecting on what has been most useful is proving to be a useful reflection process.  I have found that I am telling colleagues about several tools.  The tools and things I have learned varies with the group or work I am currently doing at the time.  I have learned so much in 8 weeks but I also realize I have much to learn.  I’m excited to be done with the class and give my brain some time to process without adding anything new.

My final project for the assessment class is completed (for now) and is posted on the discussion board.  In another post I shared my reflections about learning how to develop a website – which was a big part of the final project for me.  But,  the work of developing the content for the course, e.g. learner objectives, taxonomy table, deciding what tools to use for the assessment process, etc.  I really enjoyed this part of the assignment.  Course development has always been something I enjoyed.  I have used the 4MAT instructional design (based on Kolb’s experiential learning cycle) as the “road map” for design and I found that Blooms Taxonomy fits beautifully with 4MAT with just about the same sequence of learning for the participants.  Yet,  as I reviewed other’s work from the course, and each time I revisited my content I would have an idea of how I could tweak the design further.  I feel that courses should continually evolve based on experiences of the participant and instructor as they go through the course as well as consideration of new research related to the course (evidence based practices).  For now I am considering the assignment done but definitely plan on continuing the development of the course.

Coincidentally, this past Friday, I had a work meeting in which 3 other colleagues and myself were discussing a course that the four of us developed originally 4+ years ago.  I had a huge “aha” in the course of the meeting in which I realized that the four of us (all masters level, very experienced educators) had developed a course in which we defined activity purposes but never developed learner objectives.  Up until this point in time our responsibilites had been primarily to develop the course and support trainers of the course in carrying out the course with fidelity.  Basically, then we were responsible for fidelity of the course process or instruction.  Yet, there is a whole other aspect that I now feel we should be working on – development of learner objectives so that we can truly evaluate the effectiveness of the course.  Currently participants complete a course evaluation in which they state how they plan on using what they learned.  But,  unless we can assess learners growth based on the learner objectives defined I don’t feel that we will know if it’s making a difference or not.  I argue then – what’s the point?  What ‘s the point of working on fidelity of the process if we can’t match that to student learning.

I sit here now thinking about the backward design process we read about in the first module and I realize that in the course I discussed above that we started development from the middle (activities) and went backwards.  Now we need to go all the way to the end (learner objectives) and go backwards.  Hopefully we can connect the work done previously with the new work without too much of a “bump or gap” where the two meet. 

Ruth

It’s the end of week 7 and I have now developed one website and am working on my second.  As I have shared in several discussion posts,  I spent hours and hours and hours learning how to develop a site on google sites and it was a steep learning curve for me because this is my first experiene with this, but, in the long run I am proud of what I developed and am glad that it was an assignment. 

For the past 5 or so years I have coordinated a very large, comprehensive website for the state of WI – www.collaboratingpartners.com.  My job primarily was to organize the content, create some content, and be the gatekeeper for all content others asked to place on the website.  I worked closely with a tech person who did the technical development of the website (it is done in html).  Deciding on the most logical organization of the content is a big job but I now see how it is so closely intertwined with the technical development of the website.  I don’t know html but after doing this project and understanding what the possibilities for design are, I now realize it would have been very helpful for me to have this knowledge years ago.  I also now have renewed respect for the tech person I work with.  It’s a big, big job, and the fact our website is very large and has multiple focuses makes the job even bigger.

I actually enjoyed developing the website, even though it took me a long time to figure it out because of the challenge of figuring out how to make it the easiest yet most effective way for others to understand the content.  Both websites I developed I think are very basic with not a lot of “bells & whistles” like fun graphics but for now I’m happy with my progress.

Ruth

For the past week or so I have been ruminating about assessment.  In my job I teach about formative assessment in early childhood settings, so I have spent considerable time and energy on this topic.  I have appreciated the readings assigned for class and they have validated what I know and teach about assessment.  But, in the discussions posted in both Module 5 and 6 it seems to me that the terms “assessment” and “activity” have at times been used to describe the same thing.  Many posts refer to Casey’s activities as assessment.  My definition of an activity is quite literally the activity the teacher has designed to accomplish the learning objective of the course.  While it is true that assessment can be tied very closely to the activity, there still needs to be an intentional plan for growth and development of the learner related to the activity (and course) objectives.

This statement from the edutopia online article, “Assessment for understanding” has stuck in my mind:  “…effective assessment doesn’t happen at the end of the unit.  It’s woven throughout lessons and projects, often so seamlessly as to be indistinguishable fro everyday teaching and learning.”  I agree with this 100% but while they can be indistinguishable they also need to intentionally an thoughtfully planned out.

I’d love to hear other’s thoughts about this

Ruth

For the past week in E-Learning for Educators I have learned many new skills about researching on the internet, validating websites and information found on the internet, and personal search engines.  I have never particularly cared for doing a lot of internet searching.  It is overwhelming to me.  But, after pondering, ruminating and reflecting (or whatever one calls it) about this for the past week I realize how much I don’t know and how helpful these new skills are already.  Being able to fine tune searches is going to be very helpful in locating accurate resource and consequently be less overwhelming. 

Starting out on the personal search engine assignment (with a large sigh) I wondered what the difference was between a personal search engine and a social bookmarking sight such as DIIGO.  But, after playing around for 3-4 hours last night with the personal search engine I see that this will be useful in streamlining a search for people who want to do their own search (who don’t want all the answers provided) but don’t know know a lot about the content.  When I tried out another persons search engine on biophysics I realized I didn’t have a clue what I was looking at so it was useless for me.  So, my plan for the creation of a search engine on early childhood curriculum for school administration who don’t have background knowledge on early childhood, will be very useful.

Ruth

For my final project I am going to continue working on the course that I outlined in the Content Map done for an earlier assignment.  It’s something that I’ve been wanting to do in my actual job so this will be very useful to me.  Much of my work involves assessment of young children and we have determined there is a large need for more training in ongoing (or formative) assessment of children B-6.  On the website I work with we have a three module “course” available online that is actually just a powerpoint to view with a few accompanying small group activities.  I’m going to work on making that a more interactive course in which participant’s can share learnings.  I’m contemplating whether this would be a self-directed course or a course led by an instructor and connect credit to it but I’m leaning toward the second option.

Ruth in WI

We finished the group work successfully last week and I must say that I felt very fortunate to be working in a group of responsible folks who respected other’s time and level of professionalism.  I thought  a lot about the importance of setting ground rules for the group work and setting up a system of communication and decision making at the start of the process.  It’s funny because I work with communities in setting up collaborative 4K programs and that is exactly the same thing I teach them.  I guess it’s basic principles of collaborative work.

This week in both classes we seemed to have moved to another level of learning because the work seems harder.  In E-Learning for Educators we are focusing on validating the authenticity of a website and how to do more effective internet searches.  I’m embarrassed to say that I never even questioned the authenticity of an author or website before.  Maybe it’s because I don’t particularly like to search the web and tend to always use proven sites.  But,  one of my earliest learnings in these courses is the need for the instructor to search out and use excellent quality information (journal or website articles) as the source of content.  Being more effective in searching the web will be useful (I still don’t like it that much though!).

In Assessment of Student Learning we reviewed Bloom’s Taxonomy.  I’ve heard of this but never researched it and I’m very excited to layer this onto what I currently know about the learning cycle – primarily from Kolb’s work.  It makes perfect sense to me and integrates into how I plan my instruction now so it’s fun work for me. 

Ruth – at a working retreat in the Dells right now

I’m very excited to learn more about online surveys and specifically the Zoomerang tool.  I have used Survey Monkey in the past and knew that I could be doing a much better job at making survey’s more useful.  After comparing Survey Monkey and Zoomerang and would like to switch to Zoomerang because of the enhanced analysis capabilities available through the premium version of that tool.  It will be very usable in my job.

We have been working together in teams in both classes I am taking.  I am realizing how critical it is to be a responsible learner and team mate – it impacts their success as well as mine. 

I have many ideas rolling around in my mind about the things I am going to use immediately and the things I want to remember to practice more with and use in the future.  I’m afraid I am going to forget some valuable tools. 

In the third week of E-Learning for Educators and Assessment of Student Learning I have continued to learning and grow as an on-line learner and future instructor.  I have learned to post a forum on moodle, share bookmarks with a group on Diigo and how to create a concept map with Inspiration (although I cannot get it attached to my blog. 

Backwards design and using a concept map is so logical.  I am a very right-brained learner and this tool will help me organize my thoughts and share with my colleagues.  I am definitely going to continue to use Diigo and Moodle in my work.  Diigo will be a wonderful tool to share resource with colleagues throughout the state.  I especially like the possibilities with placing a sticky note on a document.  It will make communication much clearer.

On to week four.