Week #5 reflections

Applying Bloom's Taxonomy to the Casey report was the largest component for this week's learning. I was introduced to Bloom's chart when I was an undergrad & 10 years later it's still around. I think application of higher level thinking projects has merit beyond a simple assignment or quick dismissal -- The taxonomy should be on the forefront of our minds in all assessment and learning activities. In fact, I do use it when I'm creating our choice boards for senior English; it certainly does make it easier to service different levels of learners. I've included the e-article of Bloom's supplied by Laurie:

http://techlearning.com/article/8670



Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS)

•Remembering - Recognising, listing, describing, identifying, retrieving, naming,
locating, finding
•Understanding - Interpreting, Summarising, inferring, paraphrasing, classifying,
comparing, explaining, exemplifying
•Applying - Implementing, carrying out, using, executing
•Analysing - Comparing, organising, deconstructing, Attributing, outlining, finding,
structuring, integrating
•Evaluating - Checking, hypothesising, critiquing, Experimenting, judging, testing,
Detecting, Monitoring
•Creating - designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing, devising, making

Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS)

Week #4 Reflection Notes

I'm pretty sure what I posted for our midterm reflection covers it all. I've compared what we did with the other two groups that posted & I'd say, comparatively, we're ahead. Compared to the evaluation rubric, we're ahead. I guess I'll rest easy being ahead. It is just such a blessing to have a group that works well together & does what they're supposed to do in a timely manner. I wish I could find the same motivation to write my PDP Educational Philosophy...best get to it!

Wordl or Tagcrowd

Want a funky way of looking at your paper? I tried visiting Tagcrowd & Wordl. They create items that look like this (sorry, couldn't save my own as a jpeg file). Makes you "look" at your paper in a whole different light.

Teamwork for Midterm

A class we took this summer absolutely challenged us & to a point tried to "convert" people into eliminating, entirely, team projects from a final grade. Yes, I know we've all been a part of teams that don't pull equal weight, but gosh darn it, it's so nice when they do...and let's face it, life is just better then. My group of Jennie, Andrea & Laurie was a blessing. We're done w/ the project AND IT'S MONDAY! It feels good to be on top of things b/c so many things are simply not "ahead" in my life right now. I will celebrate this victory amidst the anguish. Who am I kidding, I've got it good right now regardless of the stressor

named Graduate School-Thesis Completion.

GO TEAM!

Week #3 Reflection Notes

Okay, since this is my space to put my thoughts - here goes: I am STILL scratching my head with concept maps. I understand cluster maps, I understand flow charts. I understand mapping out learning objectives and understanding...BUT I am still not 100% certain I understand them as we're supposed to as they pertain to this course. The reading links for concept maps were extremely difficult to track. Many of them seemed like problem-solution scenarios but I didn't see anything that looked like something that was created with INSPIRATION or BUBBL.US...I'm wondering if the links I clicked on were incorrect. So, here's what I felt like:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8647879253211409572&ei=jDPRStuSMI-MqALD99nGBA&q=scratching+my+head&hl=en

On an unrelated note I'm feeling my suspicions -- it's really difficult to keep up with other students posts unless I'm intentionally following their blogs. Okay, typing this convinces me -- I'm going to spend the next 15 minutes looking at others' blogs to see if I'm on the right track...Guess that would be helpful to do, too, since I can't see anyone's concept maps they've saved in the course discussion section, anyway.

Okay, I just visited about 8 of my classmates blogs & here's what I'm seeing (in a random list):
-some fantastic-looking blogs (really liked how Jennie created a reflection spot for all 8 mods in one spot, clever)
-some bare-bones...3 of the ones I visited had only week 1's reflections - I think this instruction was unclear to more than just me
-Perfect-storm posts: people got more out of that article than me...I'm on information overload & wasn't able to process the different tools present. (Better bookmark that article for later).

Week #2 Reflections

This week we created our blogs. I've used blogger.com once before and got the initial quirks out, so this time around I was able to put a little more thought into arrangement, picture entry, including interactive links and such. I saw a fellow educator use her blog as a place to keep a photo-journal...I think I'll try that in a future post. Certainly looking at other people's blogs has been an eye-opener. I guess I don't really think of blogs as a place for gathering followers BUT it makes it much easier if you don't want to get too involved with 2-way communication. In those regards, these blogs are much like caringbridge is for patients; proof-positive that we all just want a place to be heard.

Concept Mapping - morphed

I used bubbl.us to create this simple concept map...actually a bunch of students and I sat down & we worked together. At the start of the unit they knew little-to-nothing of Amish; by this point you can see that some concepts were becoming clearer. The purpose was to classify/categorize different areas they were learning about so they could view closer the inner workings of how beliefs effect habits/actions/daily life. The next tier to this activity is to then draw comparisons and contrasts to typical "English" lifestyle. This concept map now includes the Objective Description AND what the proficient parameters were at the onset of the project.