Katrina Steiner's E-Learning Blog

This week we compared 2 courses, worked on the taxonomy of our final project, Discussed with each other how our final project was going and created a precourse survey (which I added to my links feel free to try it out).  I think it would have been interesting in this section to have us post our surveys in the discussion board at the begining of the week and try out each others surveys.  (I could even see this as a first week project and use it for an Ice Breaker in future classes).  Over all the survey was the easiest part of this week.  The hardest part has been trying to get my course to fit into a format that is looking for moe tools then I am allowed to use in my classes due to security issues.  I would like my final to include tools I actually can use and not have to create fictitional assignments simply to have an excuse to use new tools.  After all in our classes we are teacing content not technology and I think when dealing with a K-12 class it is much better to keep things contained in as few programs as possible so we are not having to teach them a new program with every assignment.  I’m not opposed to learning new technology for myself since I am constantly trying out new things but I do think we should have a limit on what we introduce in a class so we can continue to teach them the content instead of spending preacious classtime teaching them technologly.  As it is right now our students need to know how to use 2 programs. Centra, and Moodle. Even this seems to be quite overwhelming for some of our students.  I would hate to then have to also teach them google docs, quizmaker, survey monkey, wikiapaces, edublogs, or other programs in order for them to complete each assignment.  At that rate I would be spending half of our classtime teaching them how to use technology, create an account, and sign in.  This would not leave very much room for teaching them what they have come to learn, Biology. Just my thoughts on things.

Anyway after that rant I have been working on my Final project I have used 2 tools so far (the ones I use in class) I have pointed out in my project that Moodle can be used as a Wiki, Blog, Quiz, gradebook, and many other things since it is a LMS.  What I would like to know is if that is acceptable in the final or do I have to create make believe assignments?  To see my efforts so far please feel free to visit the link to My final project.  You can also find a link to it in my Sites.

I found the taxonomy project to be very challenging.  While the activities may at first glance seem all to be the same, delving deeper is required in order to determine which activities fall under which categories.  To put the class discussed in the article online would not require much changing in the course.  Other courses however may require a lot more adaptation to go online.  I think the hardest courses to adapt to an online environment are those subjects that are learned best through hands on activities or Labs.

Here is a table showing what I have so far for my Final project in blooms taxonomy.

This week we worked on a group project called a Jigsaw.  Each member of the group researched one type of assessment tool and then we worked together as a group to consolidate all of the tools into one cohesive “toolbox” .  Our results can be seen if you go to our Assessment Tools Toolbox. I found this project very interesting and enjoyed working with my group.  We used Scribblar to meet along with Google Docs and Sites to collaborate our work efforts.  I think our final project turned out pretty nicely.

This week we looked at the use of technology in online classes as well as using concept maps.  It seems that many more things have come out since the article we read was written.  When looking at the items used it seems that we still do not use technology to its full potential in our classes.  We are getting closer but there are some things that are still not possible due to the erased budget still being a large hurdle to over come.  The influx of students in the online learning environment has expanded from college to now include K-12 as well.  With the ext ream variety of programs available out there it was hard to tell from the new list of tools which type are used the most..  It would be interesting to break them down into categories and see which categories get the most votes rather then listing them by specific tools.

This week we discussed the pro’s and con’s of using blogs in the classroom.  I have seen both sides of the argument discussed in class and it seems that people seem to either love them or hate them.  There were a few that could see a use for them but were unsure of the security and privacy available.  We also brought the discussion off topic a bit and there was also some discussion on when is technology just more to learn rather then a useful tool for learning. I myself am still reluctant to use Blogs in my classroom because of this point.