Week 6 of CEdO 550

My students are gaining 21st century skills by...

• learning about new technologies available, communicating in new and different ways, being allowed to multi-task, and gaining knowledge through student-centered learning. I have attempted to include more real-life lessons and discussions into my courses to expand my students' ways of learning.

I understand the Virtual School Legislation in Wisconsin and am concerned/excited about...

• It concerns me how much money is sent to virtual schools because of open enrollment when it does not cost the virtual school as much per student as it is receiving. That is a lot of lost money for a traditional school. Every student learns differently and I think there could be a more equal way of distributing money to traditional schools and virtual schools. 

My district involvement in online learning includes...

• My district has very little online learning incorporated into it. We have recently implemented My Big Campus. I have been working on learning all the tools it has to offer and have begun using it in a couple of my courses. 

During the module I was excited to learn about...

• This class has allowed me to learn much more about teaching online. I also have learned a lot about student-centered learning and how to adapt lessons to be more student-centered. I am excited to be able to practice some of the skills I have learned into my own classroom and see how my students react to it and adapt to it.

Week 5 of CEdO550

My experience with online communities has been …

• This class has been my only experience with an online community. 

I believe the biggest benefit of collaborative groups is …

• a variety of views and opinions. Everyone thinks about things in a different way and has a different viewpoint on topics or projects. The group can get a wide variety of answers to questions and a wide variety of ways of accomplishing the task at hand. 

I believe the greatest challenge is/would be … coordinating work time with group members and also equal work. Depending on the nature of the class it can be very difficult to coordinate a meeting time with group members, especially with adults. It would be a little easier with high school and younger classes as class time can be given to work together. Equal work can be a great challenge for groups. Sometimes groups can have one member that will take charge and think that they are the only one that knows how or what to do. Or one or more group members could fall behind on their share of the work.  My thoughts regarding the social development and socialization issues are … I think it is very important for students to work collaboratively to develop socially. For many students that is how they learn to work with others and work cooperatively with people that they may have not thought they could.

Week 4 of CEdO550

In reflecting on my teaching experiences to date, I would say that the proportion of teacher centered versus student centered lessons has been …

• I would say that my classroom is much more teacher centered than student centered. I have attempted to make more student centered lessons over the years. When I create lessons that are student centered, the students retain much more information. 

I was able to identify more than one authentic assessment to measure mastery of a single concept lesson when I …

• My students have been involved with a reality check in which they attend an event at which they have to make real-life decisions. The students are given a life status (married, single, children, no children), they have a preselected career that has an annual income attached to it. Based on knowledge gained in class, the students must make life decisions based on the life status and income. Some find they have to get a part-time job in order to pay for their necessities and some find they have to get a part-time job in order to pay for their wants. After the event I am able to look at their paperwork and their checkbook register to see how successful they were at budgeting, making life choices, and balancing a checkbook.

The rubric I created for my lesson clearly defined expectations and scoring for the lesson so that my students could …

• understand what was expected of them. The rubric also told the students what they were required to do to receive full points, partial points or no points.  The rubrics are very clear and to the point and leave little room for subjectivity. 

While working on this module I had success/difficulty while doing something new involving …

• I am still struggling a bit while trying to make lessons more student centered. I find it difficult to break out teacher centered instruction when that has been the technique used when I have been a student. I also find it difficult because student centered instruction was not heavily stressed when I was an undergrad.