Nickel's Blog

Reflective Journal E-Learning

E-Learning Reflections (Also see the Assessment Reflections Blog at http://nickelk7804.wordpress.com. I experienced both courses simultaneously, so my thinking was reflected from both courses here and in that blog.)
Week 1 A confusing week, but I think I’m getting it. As my first experience with online learning, the learning curve may be a little steeper than expected. Keeping up with the threaded conversations for this course and the Assessment course (which I’m taking simultaneously) may be the biggest challenge. Okay, so I am skeptical, but excited. I think there are lots of ways that online learning can be great, but have to say that I am a face-to-face kinda learner myself.    I see how it’s nice to engage on your on time, but I really feel that something is missing, for me anyway, in online exchanges. None of the Myths surprised me and I had heard about class size limits needing to be lower for online facilitators. I wonder – do administrators know this?
The learning curve could be high here, and although it’s good for me, I think this might be one of those things that I’m not very good at, so it will take perseverance.
I enjoyed the article “What It Means to Be a Critically Reflective Teacher”. It is good to remember how we make the weather in our classrooms. We have moved to more and more reflection in our district, through peer coaching and with more formal learning teams and team reflection now. I think this is a move in the right direction.

Week 2 I love Diigo. I had tried to use Delicious at one point, but like many things, it was a flash in the pan workshop and I didn’t find the time to cfollow up and actually use it. When we switched out our old laptops for new ones, we saved our bookmarks on Diigo, so it was great to keep using that system. Again, this was a new learning for me. Although I put stuff on Diigo once before, now I understand it’s use.
I’ve used Moodle with my 3, 4 and AP classes, but look forward to being on the learner side and see what it’s capable of.
Love the Goethe quote: To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding, in spite of distances or thoughts expressed ,can make of this earth a garden.
The idea of new personas is both frightening and exciting. I worry about young people’s safety. Increased convenience and collaboration make for decreased control – but when hasn’t that been true? The shared sense of making meaning and learning is intriguing and also problematic. I want a guide and an expert when I am in a formal learning situation.    In informal situations I make meaning and continue to be a learner always. I also want a place for hand-held guidance and a place to hear the experts’ claims.
Netiquette – so vital! I think some of these things could be adapted and used in face-to-face interaction training too.

Week 3 Wow! Working together online. It was a good experience and I was lucky to have a great group.
My ah-ha this week was the connection between cognitive coaching and the online learning experience. A facilitator can really help a student make meaning. – and other classmates can just as much. I still wonder about the quality of the facilitator, I think that is very important, and especially about the quality of feedback from other classmates. I have always felt students should be compared to a standard, not a curve of however their classmates are doing. The collaborative learning experience of online discussions seems to rely on the quality of ones classmates. That could be great – or not.
The Voice article gave me some clear ways that online learning can be beneficial and ways that it transforms teaching/learning, not just substitutes technology for face-to-face activities.

Week 4 I created my first Moodle quiz this week. I made it a survey, as I thought the material warranted more opinions and experiences than right/wrong answers. I do hope to put some preteaching vocabulary quizzes into my Moodle sites for levels 3, 4 and AP at school, so this was great to get experience doing this.
I am still not sure what to include in my bio. I am reluctant to put lots of personal information out online. I need to think through what purpose the info serves and then what makes sense to include.
I’m still wrestling with the collaborative aspects of online learning. In my Assessment course we did a group jigsaw activity this week. This gave me some insight, but I still see the “collaboration” as more of a – let’s work on things separately, talk about them, then put together into one big picture all the pieces that we’ve working on individually. I think it can be more and perhaps in the Collaboration course I’ll learn how to address that need.

Week 5 Fun little web hoax investigations this week. I learned a lot about how to evaluate a site too. Good to learn to use the dropbox feature of Moodle as well.
The Teaching Zack to Think article was eye-opening, although unfortunately not terribly surprising. I am amazed at how tech un-savy some of my students are and how easily some believe what’s on the web or in a book. In my assessment course this week we looked at Bloom’s taxonomy. A nice connection to being sure to teach high-order thinking skills so that students can evaluate sites.
My question remains though, when are students developmentally ready for higher cognitive skills? We can teach, but are we sure they can learn? That said, I really like the questioning tools from this week too.

Week 6 Yep – reading a book is a self-paced learning method. How different is adult learning from others? My question from last week about cognitive skills matching developmental skills could be an explanation for why/how adult teaching/learning is different. I am often reminded of Daniel Pink’s book Drive, in which he talks about autonomy, mastery and purpose being the true motivators.
I wish I had known some of the searching tools and skills that I learned in this course when I was doing my research in Curriculum Review these last 3 years. Much of my process was trial and error. It is helpful to think about how to teach students these skills.

Week 7 Once again the E-Learning and Assessment courses blend. As I create my lesson plan with assessments, I’m considering how to set up the online course. The chapter 3 and 4 are great tools! My Assessment project is at http://humboldtwayzatateacherexchange.wikispaces.com.
I’m working on my E-Portfolio and wondering what to include about myself still.    I had a little trouble finding some Moodle resources – like my quiz – again. –and I attached my reflective journal blog from the Assessment course as well.

Week 8 Summary of Reflections: Whew! What a lot of information in a short period of time. I actually found myself arguing for online courses the other day and realized how my thinking has been shaped by my experiences with these courses.
I also did a wiki project for a summer institute course. I could have done a word document, but when I thought about what type of resource would be most helpful, I opted for the wiki—because now I could opt for that – now I know how to do it
I have some lingering questions about for whom online courses are best and how to meet the needs of all students, not only through the empathy exercises of the last week, but because I myself have not found online as engaging as face-to-face. My experience with the one week face-to-face seminar last week reconfirmed my thoughts about that.
I do plan on delivering a pre-travel online experience for the German teacher exchange, and a possible professional development course in Pragmatics online. Also I hope to do my practicum as a staff development theme on culture – either world languages teaching culture or cultural proficiency for a broader audience of teachers.
Thanks Becky Mather and E-Learning classmates! It’s been fun and thought provoking! Karen

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