Reviewing your previous blog posts, what, if anything, has changed in your attitude toward online schools and online schooling over the past 15 weeks?
Going into this course, I did not have too many preconceived notions about online leaning for K-12. I can't say my attitude towards online schooling has changed too much, but I was surprised or at least intrigued by the following:
That online learning is so prevalant is some places (especially FL) while not being as common place in other geographic reasons.
The role of for profit institutions regarding online learning
The need for research and/or modifications to make K-12 online learning effective.
I think there is a lot of thinking/planning that needs to go into finding a blended role to introduce online learning to a new generation. This is a very interesting topic that I want to pay close attention to as an educator.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Researching Credit Recovery Difficulties
What was the most difficult aspect of researching this topic?
Credit recovery seems like such a hot button issue to me right now. I was surprised that I could not find many journal articles or more reflections and insights from academia. Perhaps it was my searching skills but I could not find many studies or articles that looked at the success or value of credit recovery through a more critical lens. I was also surprised to not find many specific articles about Algebra I or math credit recovery.
It was interesting to see some general articles about the genesis and development of credit recovery programs. The jury is still out, but it will be interesting to see how this issue develops in the near future as schools implement these programs to increase graduation rates and provides students a greater variety of learning opportinities.
Credit recovery seems like such a hot button issue to me right now. I was surprised that I could not find many journal articles or more reflections and insights from academia. Perhaps it was my searching skills but I could not find many studies or articles that looked at the success or value of credit recovery through a more critical lens. I was also surprised to not find many specific articles about Algebra I or math credit recovery.
It was interesting to see some general articles about the genesis and development of credit recovery programs. The jury is still out, but it will be interesting to see how this issue develops in the near future as schools implement these programs to increase graduation rates and provides students a greater variety of learning opportinities.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Researching Online Programs_New Thoughts About Virtual Schools
What did you learn this week that struck you as particularly important in learning about virtual schools? Has your thinking changed as a result of what you learned this week?
My attention to the subject matter this week slowly drifted away from the challenges of researching online programs to really the more interesting philisophical question of "re"searching something that is relatively new by definition. We always want to compare new programs to existing programs (in this case online to f2f) but online learning is inherently a paradigm shift. It shouldn't look like a f2f program.
We need to be creative in how we even define what quality looks like. I think we do need to go back to some normed ideas of assessment scores and more commonly use measurement tools. However, I think learning should be more interesting and deep. I think with more types and modes of media and communication it can definitely be more interesting and collaborative.
However, I have to be honest that the whole movement, not just online education, but towards virtual interaction concerns me deeply. We talk from an education standpoint about the importance of inflection, timing and being able to think on your feet as an educator. If the paradigm shifts too far to favor "asynchronous" and instantaneus by brief modes of communication and learning thinking we kind of lose a human quality education and just in general.
My attention to the subject matter this week slowly drifted away from the challenges of researching online programs to really the more interesting philisophical question of "re"searching something that is relatively new by definition. We always want to compare new programs to existing programs (in this case online to f2f) but online learning is inherently a paradigm shift. It shouldn't look like a f2f program.
We need to be creative in how we even define what quality looks like. I think we do need to go back to some normed ideas of assessment scores and more commonly use measurement tools. However, I think learning should be more interesting and deep. I think with more types and modes of media and communication it can definitely be more interesting and collaborative.
However, I have to be honest that the whole movement, not just online education, but towards virtual interaction concerns me deeply. We talk from an education standpoint about the importance of inflection, timing and being able to think on your feet as an educator. If the paradigm shifts too far to favor "asynchronous" and instantaneus by brief modes of communication and learning thinking we kind of lose a human quality education and just in general.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
New thoughts on Virtual Schools
What did you learn this week that struck you as particularly important in learning about virtual schools? Has your thinking changed as a result of what you learned this week?
I was encouraged after reading some of the research studies regarding virtual Algebra I classes that some key pieces that I consider important are being implemented in virtual courses. I read some great attitudinal data about students feeling more confident about using technology in general. Excited to use the graphing calculator as part of their course work and having student to student interaction regarding authentic math applications (the Dwyer study reported that the students in online courses reported a higher amount of positive experinces working with other students on real-world problems compared to the f2f comparison group.
I have recently been back on a graphing calculator kick in my classroom and love tying the learning of concepts into the modes of learning: Algebraic, graphical, numerical, and verbal. I could really see a well-crafted virtual course taking advantage of these "views" or points of entry and having student work together with actual data graphs, etc.
I also feel more adamant about the movement of the common core standards in mathematics being such a high priority and that it should be treated with an even greater sense of urgency.
Regarding the research studies, it is clear that it is hard to compare virtual to f2f but in reality, it is even hard to compare any courses district to district, state to state, etc. because there so many different curricula.
The end measurable pieces should be easier to set in stone (at least for math) and then we can use data to figure out how student best arrive at that goal. I am not saying that simple standardized tests are the only measure of deep math knowledge, but they are a very relevant starting place, and we need to get those data points and begin to measure knowledge using other tools to build off the foundations (standards).
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
A platform to launch off of...
Having just finished our online curriculum unit on quadratic function, I was happy about organizing and sharing some of my brick and mortar materials into one google document. It was great to become more familiar with google documents and learn how to collaborate.
I do like the kind of open-ended lay out of google documents and the comfort in knowing that I can easily "share" my document with anyone who has web access basically. I also feel that I am often drawn to and tempted to use the spreadsheet format of a document. But an even better starting place I found again was http://www.mywebspiration.com/ that I could kind of brainstorm using a concept map mentality and that can actually by saved as or transferred to a google document to create a more linear outline.
Those were things that I learned and practiced in the process. What I see in other unit plans and would like to improve on is a more polished final product. Having looked at the linear functions unit plan which is organized on moodle, it is so much more impressive and easy to follow.
Our unit had all the right "parts" but it needed to be laid out in a more user-friendly manner on to a platform (if I am using the right word) like moodle. Also, the links and visuals were so much more easy to follow.
I guess I feel like I am always in search of a "template" to put all my ideas, however, I get frustrated because the application of the day always seems to change. I have spent a lot of time trying to improve my faculty website at our school districts website. However, it is just too clunky. I have a lot to share but the process is just too tedious and limiting. I know just enough to be dangerous in a lot of different arenas but don't have a home base to organize my thoughts, unit plans, lesson ideas, etc.
Not to bring it full circle or contradict my original message board post this week about open-source applications, but I would be happy to pay a reasonable fee to have a template and flexible application to share my materials with my students and collegues if it avoided roadblocks and constant changes.
However, after seeing
I do like the kind of open-ended lay out of google documents and the comfort in knowing that I can easily "share" my document with anyone who has web access basically. I also feel that I am often drawn to and tempted to use the spreadsheet format of a document. But an even better starting place I found again was http://www.mywebspiration.com/ that I could kind of brainstorm using a concept map mentality and that can actually by saved as or transferred to a google document to create a more linear outline.
Those were things that I learned and practiced in the process. What I see in other unit plans and would like to improve on is a more polished final product. Having looked at the linear functions unit plan which is organized on moodle, it is so much more impressive and easy to follow.
Our unit had all the right "parts" but it needed to be laid out in a more user-friendly manner on to a platform (if I am using the right word) like moodle. Also, the links and visuals were so much more easy to follow.
I guess I feel like I am always in search of a "template" to put all my ideas, however, I get frustrated because the application of the day always seems to change. I have spent a lot of time trying to improve my faculty website at our school districts website. However, it is just too clunky. I have a lot to share but the process is just too tedious and limiting. I know just enough to be dangerous in a lot of different arenas but don't have a home base to organize my thoughts, unit plans, lesson ideas, etc.
Not to bring it full circle or contradict my original message board post this week about open-source applications, but I would be happy to pay a reasonable fee to have a template and flexible application to share my materials with my students and collegues if it avoided roadblocks and constant changes.
However, after seeing
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Embarking on our Virtual Course Adventure...
As Jung and I begin our curriculum unit on quadratic functions, I am most concerned about figuring out the appropriate tools and sequencing to "deliver" the material. Integral to quality teaching are well sequenced lesson plans with appropriate content and the modeling of the material by a teacher that has good questioning techniques, wait time, and is great at listening to his or her students.
The sequencing and quality lesson materials will be transferable to an extent, but good tools to model new material will be challenging to find and determining how to account for that real-time teacher questioning will definitely be a tough task.
Looking forward to it though.
The sequencing and quality lesson materials will be transferable to an extent, but good tools to model new material will be challenging to find and determining how to account for that real-time teacher questioning will definitely be a tough task.
Looking forward to it though.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Student-Student Interaction in its infancy stage
With the theme of this week being student-student interaction, I found myself generally shifting my school of interest, a k12 school, a little more to the center. I gave it a little more credit about being "blended" than I had originally after making a phone call.
Originally, the k12 school in MA I looked at, and k12 in general seemed to me to be homeschoolers paradise, mostly asynchronous and self-paced in nature. However, there is some more f2f time built in and what sounds to me to be an attempt at student-student interaction more in the form of community building. There are students interacting through k-mail, students posting questions to a real live teacher that would be addressed, thus making it student-student interaction at least indirectly. Finally, there seemed to be attempts at coordinated field trips and outings.
I call it student-student interaction in its infacy stage, because I still don't quite hear or see evidence of a movement towards true facilitated dialogue or interaction between students.
I have kind of a vision in mind being a math teacher of posted summary questions that students would answer and interact with, or perhaps open-ended problems that students could solve using different strategies and interacting/learning from each other. I don't quite seeing that done, but perhaps I have not dug deep enough yet.
I hope to investigate these ideas with my project, but already think it is easier said than done.
I found myself shifting many
Originally, the k12 school in MA I looked at, and k12 in general seemed to me to be homeschoolers paradise, mostly asynchronous and self-paced in nature. However, there is some more f2f time built in and what sounds to me to be an attempt at student-student interaction more in the form of community building. There are students interacting through k-mail, students posting questions to a real live teacher that would be addressed, thus making it student-student interaction at least indirectly. Finally, there seemed to be attempts at coordinated field trips and outings.
I call it student-student interaction in its infacy stage, because I still don't quite hear or see evidence of a movement towards true facilitated dialogue or interaction between students.
I have kind of a vision in mind being a math teacher of posted summary questions that students would answer and interact with, or perhaps open-ended problems that students could solve using different strategies and interacting/learning from each other. I don't quite seeing that done, but perhaps I have not dug deep enough yet.
I hope to investigate these ideas with my project, but already think it is easier said than done.
I found myself shifting many
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Week 5_Evaluating Online Teachers_Teaching Perspectives Survey Results
With an overarching weekly goal of determining how to evaluate online teachers, we began week 5 by doing a self-assessment of our own teaching perspectives at http://www.teachingperspectives.com/ . The survey broke the strenghts of our beliefs, intentions and actions into five main categories:
Transmission, Apprenticeship, Developmental, Nurturance, and Social Reform
Key Question: Did the results of your TPI fit your image of yourself as a teacher?
The results of the survey did meet my self-image as a teacher. First and foremost, I was pretty balanced in all caterogies and not truly dominant (or recessive) in any category. That more or less fits my personality and other types of surveys I have always taken about myself.
My strongest ratings came in the Transmission and Developmental Perspectives (although all of the first four categories were within 6 points of each other). Having had nine years of consulting Civil Engineering experience before becoming a teacher (I have also been teaching for nine years), I consider myself a pretty strong practitioner in terms of knowing my content (mathematics) and its applications in the real-world. I feel like I have a well-rounded understanding of the curriculum and do a good job of sharing that with my students. The developmental perspective was also fairly strong. My growth over the last nine years has mostly been in effective questioning and understanding content from a students perspective (apprenticeship).
There is, however, signficant room for growth in my abilitiy to communicate objectives and content to my students. Effective communication can take place f2f or through various media. As a "brick and mortar" teacher most of that communications comes in the form of me modeling to classrooms of about 25 student and follow up conversations through groupwork and written communication through assessments.
So, would my communication be more effective or more difficult as an online teacher?
Which leads us to our 2nd Key Question:
Interestingly, the main low scoring category was social reform
Do you think the TPI results are different for the same person teaching online and face-to-face?
I think the TPI results for the same person teaching online versus face-to-face would be more or less the same but I think it would really too hard to adequately tell what type of online teacher you would be until you had actually did it for a significant amount of time. To relate to my self-analysis above and how I think my perspectives would translate to becoming an online teacher, I am pretty sure I would first focus on my strengths. I would work very hard to develop clear objectives and a solid systematic approach to learning Algebra or whatever topic I would be teaching. I think, ideally, if I was provided a solid curriculum that I could modify to make my own I could really transition nicely in terms of the transmission and developmental perspectives. In fact, I thnk I could develop some excellent essential questions and differentiate to different learners pretty well. As far as communication, the "stuff" I would want to communicate to my students could be laid out pretty nicely.
However, I think the ability to communicate effectively using new media would be very challenging. That seemed to be the general theme of our analysis this week about effective online teaching. I am not sure I know what it would look like and I am not convinced there are many reliable exemplars to learn from just yet. I am sure there are bits and pieces of excellent work, but what I am talking about is a long-term full course example of excellent teaching and learning using new media. Something that could be used for P.D. that I could take and bring back to my classroom and be supported on. I think these types of models need to be developed, peer reviewed, and critiqued know that it is new and should be changing and plays a role as ground-breaking and a work in progress.
Finally, to speak to the other nurturing and social reform perspectives for the survey I have not mentioned in this blog, I think those would be very difficult for me to develop rapidly. I scored relatively low in nurturing, although I consider that somewhat of a strength for me. However, my nurturing presents itself in those follow-up discussions, tutoring after school, and the one-on-one interactions that come often outside of the classroom but within the school building.
How could I implement those important aspects of teaching online. To me those teacher-student relationships develop in the long-term. With some students it takes me a full year to develop a more meaningful relationship. I think it would be challenging online. I also think the motivation element of teaching would be pretty difficult to develop. However, if the course work was truly differentiated and personalized, that could be done online even better than it possibly does in the classroom.
That
Transmission, Apprenticeship, Developmental, Nurturance, and Social Reform
Key Question: Did the results of your TPI fit your image of yourself as a teacher?
The results of the survey did meet my self-image as a teacher. First and foremost, I was pretty balanced in all caterogies and not truly dominant (or recessive) in any category. That more or less fits my personality and other types of surveys I have always taken about myself.
My strongest ratings came in the Transmission and Developmental Perspectives (although all of the first four categories were within 6 points of each other). Having had nine years of consulting Civil Engineering experience before becoming a teacher (I have also been teaching for nine years), I consider myself a pretty strong practitioner in terms of knowing my content (mathematics) and its applications in the real-world. I feel like I have a well-rounded understanding of the curriculum and do a good job of sharing that with my students. The developmental perspective was also fairly strong. My growth over the last nine years has mostly been in effective questioning and understanding content from a students perspective (apprenticeship).
There is, however, signficant room for growth in my abilitiy to communicate objectives and content to my students. Effective communication can take place f2f or through various media. As a "brick and mortar" teacher most of that communications comes in the form of me modeling to classrooms of about 25 student and follow up conversations through groupwork and written communication through assessments.
So, would my communication be more effective or more difficult as an online teacher?
Which leads us to our 2nd Key Question:
Interestingly, the main low scoring category was social reform
Do you think the TPI results are different for the same person teaching online and face-to-face?
I think the TPI results for the same person teaching online versus face-to-face would be more or less the same but I think it would really too hard to adequately tell what type of online teacher you would be until you had actually did it for a significant amount of time. To relate to my self-analysis above and how I think my perspectives would translate to becoming an online teacher, I am pretty sure I would first focus on my strengths. I would work very hard to develop clear objectives and a solid systematic approach to learning Algebra or whatever topic I would be teaching. I think, ideally, if I was provided a solid curriculum that I could modify to make my own I could really transition nicely in terms of the transmission and developmental perspectives. In fact, I thnk I could develop some excellent essential questions and differentiate to different learners pretty well. As far as communication, the "stuff" I would want to communicate to my students could be laid out pretty nicely.
However, I think the ability to communicate effectively using new media would be very challenging. That seemed to be the general theme of our analysis this week about effective online teaching. I am not sure I know what it would look like and I am not convinced there are many reliable exemplars to learn from just yet. I am sure there are bits and pieces of excellent work, but what I am talking about is a long-term full course example of excellent teaching and learning using new media. Something that could be used for P.D. that I could take and bring back to my classroom and be supported on. I think these types of models need to be developed, peer reviewed, and critiqued know that it is new and should be changing and plays a role as ground-breaking and a work in progress.
Finally, to speak to the other nurturing and social reform perspectives for the survey I have not mentioned in this blog, I think those would be very difficult for me to develop rapidly. I scored relatively low in nurturing, although I consider that somewhat of a strength for me. However, my nurturing presents itself in those follow-up discussions, tutoring after school, and the one-on-one interactions that come often outside of the classroom but within the school building.
How could I implement those important aspects of teaching online. To me those teacher-student relationships develop in the long-term. With some students it takes me a full year to develop a more meaningful relationship. I think it would be challenging online. I also think the motivation element of teaching would be pretty difficult to develop. However, if the course work was truly differentiated and personalized, that could be done online even better than it possibly does in the classroom.
That
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Wk4_Instructional Design_How should an online lesson look?
What did you learn about the design of online courses this week that will affect how you think about this form of instruction in the future?
The majority of what I saw through my investigation of online course design left me searching for more. To be honest, it was exactly what I expected. In my classroom, I have frequently used http://www.explorelearning.com/ which takes advantage of a dynamic visual environment to allow student to investigate concepts using sliders, etc. on a coordinate plane or perhaps doing other interactive investigations. This is an improvement of what I see in many math classrooms where many teachers are stuck in the "static" 2-d world of writing on the board. The explorelearning "gizmos" are very similar to what I saw on the sample lessons for K12. In addition to them being more visual and taking advantage of seeing things move, the explorelearning lessons and the k12 lessons seemed to have pretty well-crafted step by step investigations that help a student walk through an investigation and make observations (kind of like a scientist) to learn something new. I think this element should be taken advantage of in instructional design.
I am trying to spin it forward, to some extent for k12 because they got mainly poor design comments (even one from me) but the sole fact that there are sample lessons to view has to earn them some Kudos. My poking around with VHS, the CO state school I originally investigated, and a couple of other schools had me clicking away to find no sample lessons are activities.
So, let me summarize what I saw that I consider good:
Alignment/Transparency - Even though some materials were dry in their presentation, the lessons and scope and sequences (I took a look at several course sequences) were very clearly stated. A lot of the grading elements were also very clear. As a parent or academic advisor I appreciate this.
Some research has gone into the materials. I found no content errors or misleading activiites. I also liked the prerequisite skills checked before each lesson. This is sound instruction.
Areas for improvement:
True "Digital Media". Needs to break out of the mold of cute pictures with simple cartoons that move to something more.
True interaction. I know many courses are asynchronous, but even some kind of real-time assessments for understanding or somehow being connected to others in a learning community needs to be implemented.
The challenge is getting the best sequenced and assessed curricula (pretty achieveable goal) somehow enriched by dynamic, interactive media, that connects communities of learners.
The majority of what I saw through my investigation of online course design left me searching for more. To be honest, it was exactly what I expected. In my classroom, I have frequently used http://www.explorelearning.com/ which takes advantage of a dynamic visual environment to allow student to investigate concepts using sliders, etc. on a coordinate plane or perhaps doing other interactive investigations. This is an improvement of what I see in many math classrooms where many teachers are stuck in the "static" 2-d world of writing on the board. The explorelearning "gizmos" are very similar to what I saw on the sample lessons for K12. In addition to them being more visual and taking advantage of seeing things move, the explorelearning lessons and the k12 lessons seemed to have pretty well-crafted step by step investigations that help a student walk through an investigation and make observations (kind of like a scientist) to learn something new. I think this element should be taken advantage of in instructional design.
I am trying to spin it forward, to some extent for k12 because they got mainly poor design comments (even one from me) but the sole fact that there are sample lessons to view has to earn them some Kudos. My poking around with VHS, the CO state school I originally investigated, and a couple of other schools had me clicking away to find no sample lessons are activities.
So, let me summarize what I saw that I consider good:
Alignment/Transparency - Even though some materials were dry in their presentation, the lessons and scope and sequences (I took a look at several course sequences) were very clearly stated. A lot of the grading elements were also very clear. As a parent or academic advisor I appreciate this.
Some research has gone into the materials. I found no content errors or misleading activiites. I also liked the prerequisite skills checked before each lesson. This is sound instruction.
Areas for improvement:
True "Digital Media". Needs to break out of the mold of cute pictures with simple cartoons that move to something more.
True interaction. I know many courses are asynchronous, but even some kind of real-time assessments for understanding or somehow being connected to others in a learning community needs to be implemented.
The challenge is getting the best sequenced and assessed curricula (pretty achieveable goal) somehow enriched by dynamic, interactive media, that connects communities of learners.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Week 3_tweeting questions about K12 as an option for my child
Given the limitations of a 140-character tweet the following is what I would ask a K12, Inc. representative if I were investigating one of their schools as an option for my daughter:
Explain how k12 curriculum is the gold standard across all disciplines?
How will my child get student to student interaction, social opportunities through k12?
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Week 2_Choosing an online school_parents perspective
Limited to 140-characters, the following is what I would "tweet" to find out more about online opportunities for my daughter:
Teacher Feedback hrs/week?
Checking Assignments do I have instant grade access?
Will course meet prereqs for following courses?
Dropping option? If so, deadline?
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Week 1 Reflection
With a late start to the course, I honestly have not had time yet to read many of the articles but have however, viewed the power point and gone through this discussion boards.
What surprises me most was the size and amount of time that "virtual schooling" has existed. I was surprised to see that the Florida school dates back to 1997. As I write this, the year does not seem that long ago but to me the technology does seem so "fresh" that I would not have expected any official schooling to being until perhaps after 2000. It was great to get some background on some of the key definitions of schools versus schooling and the categorization of the types of interaction.
As I posted in my initial post, being a teacher I want to take advantage of technology in my classroom, but I anticipate the biggest upside to virtual learning will be creating more authentic, rich, student-student interactions. Even in math a well-crafted, well guided student to student interaction would improve on the mostly teacher driven direct instruction type of learning that makes up most of our teacher student learning in a "real" classroom.
What surprises me most was the size and amount of time that "virtual schooling" has existed. I was surprised to see that the Florida school dates back to 1997. As I write this, the year does not seem that long ago but to me the technology does seem so "fresh" that I would not have expected any official schooling to being until perhaps after 2000. It was great to get some background on some of the key definitions of schools versus schooling and the categorization of the types of interaction.
As I posted in my initial post, being a teacher I want to take advantage of technology in my classroom, but I anticipate the biggest upside to virtual learning will be creating more authentic, rich, student-student interactions. Even in math a well-crafted, well guided student to student interaction would improve on the mostly teacher driven direct instruction type of learning that makes up most of our teacher student learning in a "real" classroom.
About Me
Originally posted to Moodle Sunday Night_Copied and Pasted Tuesday...
A little late in getting to our first assignment but better late than never. I am a high school math teacher that wants to continue his education and keep learning how to infuse technology into my classroom. In addition, I want to get an idea of how the future of my profession might look in 5-10 years. I already see some virtual learning options being implemented at the school I teach at now.
I formerly taught in NYC (for 6 years) which is how I became involved with Teachers College but now live in RI, so I already am taking advantage of online learning to keep some continuity in my professional development. The online course I took at TC was Computers and Problems Solving which basically focused on Web 2.0 tools. What I liked about it was being exposed to some tools I could use in my classroom. I experimented with google docs, wikis, Flickr, and Webspiration. It was nice to gain some exposure, however, I sometimes find it a little frustrating to "experiment" with new tools that may or may not be commonly used or transferable to my profession (or may become out of fashion in a year or so). Most of the tools we did use could be applicable to the high school community (my students) but I still find technology roadblocks in my school and a lack of time to efficiently implement the tools while meeting other curriculum demands.
I also found the "collaboration" in that course to be very poorly defined and ineffective. There needs to be some very clear norms/expectations in any online learning environment. I hope this course can help define some new paradigms that are useful for us and for a high school or other k-12 learning community.
I also took 2 online courses to learn Geometer's SketchPad. An awesome technology tool for teaching Geometry. This was more of a "product" course where I just had to independently complete assignments each week. It was agressive but productive and I found the assignments really helped direct my learning and I got just enough feedback to focus my independent learning.
Looking forward to the course.
Gus Steppen
A little late in getting to our first assignment but better late than never. I am a high school math teacher that wants to continue his education and keep learning how to infuse technology into my classroom. In addition, I want to get an idea of how the future of my profession might look in 5-10 years. I already see some virtual learning options being implemented at the school I teach at now.
I formerly taught in NYC (for 6 years) which is how I became involved with Teachers College but now live in RI, so I already am taking advantage of online learning to keep some continuity in my professional development. The online course I took at TC was Computers and Problems Solving which basically focused on Web 2.0 tools. What I liked about it was being exposed to some tools I could use in my classroom. I experimented with google docs, wikis, Flickr, and Webspiration. It was nice to gain some exposure, however, I sometimes find it a little frustrating to "experiment" with new tools that may or may not be commonly used or transferable to my profession (or may become out of fashion in a year or so). Most of the tools we did use could be applicable to the high school community (my students) but I still find technology roadblocks in my school and a lack of time to efficiently implement the tools while meeting other curriculum demands.
I also found the "collaboration" in that course to be very poorly defined and ineffective. There needs to be some very clear norms/expectations in any online learning environment. I hope this course can help define some new paradigms that are useful for us and for a high school or other k-12 learning community.
I also took 2 online courses to learn Geometer's SketchPad. An awesome technology tool for teaching Geometry. This was more of a "product" course where I just had to independently complete assignments each week. It was agressive but productive and I found the assignments really helped direct my learning and I got just enough feedback to focus my independent learning.
Looking forward to the course.
Gus Steppen
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