CEdO555 Week 2 - Vision and Mission, Project Proposal

This week we were asked to write our vision and mission statements for our portfolio. It took me some time to think about where I think my career is heading and what I am going to do to get there. Once those statements were written we were to add them to our portfolio. It was exciting to finally start this huge undertaking!

The other task for the week was to draft our first project proposal. I am finding this task to be a bit difficult. I'm a little unclear on what exactly is expected for the project. However, if I understand it a little bit...I would like to find a way to make my classroom nearly paperless, flipped to be a non-traditional learning environment, and fully functional if I am not there. I plan to use our district's social learning platform to assist in most of my proposal, as well as other web 2.0 tools.

CEdO555 Week 2 - Vision and Mission, Project Proposal

This week we were asked to write our vision and mission statements for our portfolio. It took me some time to think about where I think my career is heading and what I am going to do to get there. Once those statements were written we were to add them to our portfolio. It was exciting to finally start this huge undertaking!

The other task for the week was to draft our first project proposal. I am finding this task to be a bit difficult. I'm a little unclear on what exactly is expected for the project. However, if I understand it a little bit...I would like to find a way to make my classroom nearly paperless, flipped to be a non-traditional learning environment, and fully functional if I am not there. I plan to use our district's social learning platform to assist in most of my proposal, as well as other web 2.0 tools.

CEdO555 Week 1 - Professional Portfolios

This is the first week of CEdO555 in which we will propose our culminating project and begin creating our professional portfolio. I recall in 515 that we were told we would be creating a portfolio using a Google site. So after creating our Google site for 515, I continued to update that site in hopes it would help me at this point in my Master's journey. At this point, I am thankful I have done that.

This week we were asked to research other professional portfolios. I found one that is for a fellow business educator and two who have gone through the MEIT program. Below are the three that I found.


Nick Havlik's portfolio

• Nick Havlik is a technology education teacher who created his portfolio as a requirement of his MEIT cohort. He chose to organize his portfolio according to the National Educational Technology Standards. He included an artifact for each course taken and a description of each artifact. His side headings are easy to follow and functional.

Ann Perry's portfolio

• Ann Perry is a science teacher who also created her portfolio as a requirement for her MEIT cohort. She chose to organize according to the NETS. She included artifacts from each course and descriptions of the artifacts. Her portfolio is very easy to navigate and easy to read.

Jennifer Morgan's portfolio

• This portfolio belongs to a teacher who teaches in Utah. She begins by giving some basic information about herself and explaining what will be seen in the portfolio. The portfolio is very easy to navigate with clear side headings. The site is easy to read with little distractions, colors are appropriate and fonts are readable. It included artifacts with links and descriptions.

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.

CEdO 550 - Week 3

What is the greatest challenge that I have encountered as an online teacher/facilitator and how did I manage it?

• I would say that my biggest challenge was getting over my anxiety of facilitating a synchronous activity. I was very nervous that I would hear crickets after posing my questions or that I would get so nervous that I would stumble over my words and not be clear about my message. Once I got passed that feeling, I felt good about presenting. There are many things to pay attention to when using a classroom like Elluminate and I found myself missing what was being said in the chat area. I think I used the other tools effectively though.

Some things that I feel are really important to consider about synchronous and asynchronous facilitation as I prepare to facilitate my threaded and web conference discussions are. . .

• I think that different learning styles must be considered when planning synchronous and asynchronous activities. I also feel that a great deal of organization is required. During synchronous facilitation, the facilitator must know what needs to be discussed in the given amount of time as well as making sure to have enough material to be covered in the alloted time period. During asynchronous facilitation, different learning styles need to be taken into consideration to ensure that every student will benefit from the asynchronous work.

I chose my particular discussion topic because . . .

• I chose E-Learning 2010 because virtual learning has been a highly debated topic since it has come about. As a traditional classroom teacher I find both sides very interesting.

One thing that I thought about when developing rubrics for the 2 different discussions is. . .

• I thought about having clear objectives that needed to be met with specific directions for each point value.