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
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
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
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)