Assessment in E-Learning Week 2 Reflection

This week has been interesting to me.  I've never really worked with blogs even though I've built full webpages with Dreamweaver and code, so I'm excited to be forced to experiment!  I have recently applied for a job as an Instructional Coach in my high school where I would help to train new teachers, remediate those with Needs Improvement or Unsatisfactory evaluations and just generally help teachers find the professional development they need to progress in their profession. 

When I first started taking the E-Learning and Online Teaching classes at Stout, I did it with the idea that I might be interested in taking on an online class at a community college.  Now, I think I may be able to really incorporate what I'm learning into professional development for my colleagues, which is really exciting.  Blogs would be a great way for us to do that since we currently have no online classes and don't work with a CMS at all (we used to use Moodle, but no longer). I'm looking forward to the rest of this class, with a bit of a different perspective in mind than I had had before.

Blog Uses Depends on the Course

I found the article, Classroom blogging in the service of student-centered pedagogy: Two high school teachers’ use of blogs, to be very interesting. As a high school teacher, it was exciting to see some material that pertains to what I am doing right now as opposed to what I might be doing in the future. That said, I think I focused most on the six blogging practices and where they might fit best. Based on their results and my own experiences, I think in a high school classroom, Sharing Resources and Recording Lesson Highlights would be the most beneficial. I think that if a teacher is going to supplement their curriculum with a website or blog, they should only have one place for students to go for content, handouts and reviews, as well as for conversation. I loved the idea of each student being responsible for posting "Lesson of the Day". When you have to reexplain a concept, it forces you to really learn it. I'm not sure that all high school students would contribute well to post/response type use as was also observed in these two situations, but it might be interesting in higher level classes in English or Social Studies. I am also working with professional devleopment of teachers at my school and I actually think a blog would be a great tool to use with our New Teacher Mentoring Class. We don't have a CMS at our school, so this would be a great way to place much of the content online and allow for discussions amongst the teacher and mentors across the district. In this scenario, Response to Prompts and Reflection on Learning could be used very effectively. Overall, I think you need to know the make-up of your class and your content to know how to effectively use a blog in your course.

Reading Inventory Reaction Teacher vs. Learner-Centered Assessment

I think that this was a fairly accurate assessment of where I am in my thinking about assessment. I agreed with all of the student-centered assessment ideas, but I also agreed with two of the teacher-centered ideas.  I think I have come a long way in my thinking about assessment in the past courple of years.  I have received a lot of training on the Professional Learning Communities model in which teams of teachers use assessment to inform instruction, meaning you don't move on until "x" number of students understand and there are systems in place to continue instruction with your lower scoring students.  Emphasis is also placed on formative and summative assessments that are authentic.  Overall, I think I understand that assessment needs to be fully student-centered, but I am still struggling to completely give up tests and other standardized diagnostic measures.  Teaching at the high school level, I do feel that there are some things that need to be assessed in that way before students can move on and they can be done very quickly as checks.

Assessment in E-Learning Week One Reflection

One week in, I'm a little overwhelmed.  This class overlaps with Collaborative Communities in E-Learning for one week (two, if you count spring break for this class) and I'm struggling a bit to keep up with the level of participation I would like.  I feel like the first two classes I have taken in the sequence are a bit more philosophical in nature and I am eager to take this class because I feel like it will be a little more practical in the sense that it will stretch me to try out new assessment techniques, not only in the online classroom, but in my f2f classroom as well. Already, I'm making a blog, which I've never done before!  Being involved with RTI with my school, I am very interested in implementing effective formative and summative assessments and I am curious to see how much the online world can inform my teaching.

Going to the Movies (Assessment in E-Learning Intro Post)

I've wracked my brain tonight for another favorite movie that would be a bit more socially acceptable, but I decided, I'll just say it...I love Pretty Woman. It is my "watch it whenever it's on tv even though I have it on VHS, DVD, dvr, etc." movie. While a movie about a prostitute who falls in love and makes good definitely won't be one I'll be able to share with my kids, Julia Roberts just makes me happy. I think in my early twenties I just wanted to have the fairytale and wear fancy clothes and go to fancy places because it seemed so glamorous. Now (as I sit fully content in my worn out sweats with plan to go to bed by 10) I think when I watch it, I see the young students I work with who are going down the wrong path and I hope that they will have some moment in life that changes their life and makes them want to live up to their potential. It's not a classic...but it is the classic romantic comedy, which I'm always a sucker for! 

Kim, IL