This was the final week of CEdO525 and we learned about different ways to improve our lessons through the technologies we've been learning about.
During our six weeks, we looked at several different learning strategies and discussed how to implement them using technology. Providing students with feedback and recognition is very important to the learning experience. During week 2, we were required to review rubric generators and I particularly liked Rubistar. I found this website to be very easy to use. I was able to create a rubric from their database of products. The site allows the user to change points offered and choose their own categories for evaluating the assignment. The category description may be changed and the criteria may be manipulated for each category to suit the user. Using a rubric is a great way for students to know exactly what the teacher is expecting and for the teacher to clearly explain what the student did correctly or incorrectly. I also have implemented Google docs into one of my classes in order to communicate with students effectively.
I especially enjoyed learning more about nonlinguistic representation and advance organizers. Personally, I am not the type of learner who can imagine what something will look like. I also benefit from having some sort of visual that will help me remember information, so learning more about implementing nonlinguistic representation and advance organizers was beneficial to me. When reviewing different types of online advance organizers, I liked the printable organizers provided by Education Oasis. Education Oasis had several types of maps available, however, they were in pdf format and couldn't be saved or changed for the user's specifications. Using any kind of map to organize ideas can be useful to students.
Our final project was to improve a current lesson or unit by incorporating technology and learning strategies. I am always looking for different ways to improve my lessons and to better engage students. I found many ways to improve the unit I reviewed, which is helpful considering we started the unit immediately following me reviewing my unit. I plan to incorporate many of the things that we discussed in class and see if there is any improvement in the students.
