Is this it?

Truth be told I'm ready to let my brain rest in the area of e-learning...okay, not really. I'm already starting to contemplate whether or not what I'm proposing for my Senior English class needs to be taught online. That decision's not up to me, but for the first time in my further education career, I can honestly say I would STRONGLY consider teaching online. It would be a huge stretch for me, but I think I could do it.

Maybe you can be the judge & critique my project proposal...well, at least 4 tools worth, anyway. Check it out: Weege's final project for E-learning

Week #7 Reflections

This week has been all about getting our final project to publishing stage, but it began with the creation of objective writing. I honestly thought that wasn't too big of an issue, but my first attempts (as well as the attempts of many of my peers, I might add) were quite unsuccessful in the eyes of the instructor. Objective writing seems to be a bit more of a science than choosing terms from Bloom's Taxonomy and writing. Though it is a helpful tool, the instructor shed the most light on the topic when she posted, "What I've found is that every institution will have their own way of writing learning objectives and you will need to oblige.
The reason that I like this 'type' of learning objective is that, in order to write it as this level, you must a great deal of course design clarity." It certainly is true that we need to adapt to the criteria of each institution/instructor.

To be quite honest I thought objectives seek to level the playing field, and maybe they still do, but uniformalizing (my newly constructed word) language used within objectives may be necessary to ensure that this happens. The following website was quite helpful when considering the necessary characteristics of objectives for this class/teacher.

http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art3_4.htm

Week #6 Reflections & such

Okay,
This week we've created a pre-course survey, so here's the link:
pre-course survey -- hope that works b/c I've never done that before ;)

Then we spent a bunch of time discussion/comparing two journalism courses - one by our instructor, one by a former student. Since I'm learning, I'll attempt to create links for those, too
Here's Casey's ...alright, that only takes you to the home page of Stout's course...hemmm...I need some help w/ creating a link to something that's already embedded elsewhere, aparently.
At any rate the concept of cybercoaching became a central item of discussion, while Datta chimed in with this gem I'm taking away this week. It's about a "loop" that exists within objective-creating:
1) first the foundation - the learning objective which sets the 'goal' -

2) to build towards this learning objectives there are the activities -

3) to support the activities there are tools -

4) to discover the efficiency of the activities and the tools, there is the
assessment -

5) the assessment feeds back information to the learning objective.

Hope these things are proving as insightful for you as they are for me ;)

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!