home


 * Reflections for EDLD 5368 and online learning -

There are many benefits for teachers who can design and implement online learning. One way is that online learning can be way of differentiating instruction. Along the same lines, online learning can aid teachers in creating lessons that individualized and tailored to the needs of students with different learning styles and abilities. Online learning can also be used as a resource for teachers and can be easily shared with other teachers. Online learning allows opportunities for teachers to become more creative and involved in the learning process - in essence, learning can become multi-directional instead of the traditional teacher role of "deliverer of information". I will continue to find ways to use schoology in the classroom - from creating an online environment to engage students to providing a means of two-way communication utilizing blogs and movie/powerpoint uploads. There are many ways that I want to use online learning - creating learning tools, tutorial aids, substituting activities for students who missed labs, a resource for students who have missed multiple days. I want to learn more about how to create learning tools, lesson ideas, and looking at the various ways online learning has been used. I will use online learning to create learning tools, creating an online environment for student interactions beyond the classroom, and developing lessons and activities for tutorials aids, missed assignments, and missed labs.

Lost on the Moon activity** -

I worked with Sara Isbell to learn how to use wikis and how to incorporate wikis into our activity - Lost on the Moon. The idea of the activity is to rank fifteen items from 1 to 15 in order of what is most valuable if you became stranded on the moon. The nearest base is 200 miles away, there are 5 people in your group, and you cannot take all items with you. The idea with using the wiki with this particular activity was to capture the difficulties of communicating in space in addition to having everyone contributing to the list in a way that allowed everyone to have a voice - this also allowed students the opportunity to have genuine give and take in trying to convince each other what would be most important. Each student had their own laptop, there was to be no talking - only communication through the wiki, and the activity had to be completed within the period. The result was very good with lots of good communication between the members of each group. It was interesting to see students who normally do not participate actually become leaders in some of the groups. One lesson I learned from the experience was how to break up the groups - one frustration was that technology could only set up one wiki per class. This caused a lot of confusion at first as to what discussion to participate in. In later classes, instead of dividing groups with numbers, I divided the groups into each class - I had one group work in Period 1 wiki, another group work in Period 2 wiki, etc. This really helped work out the wrinkles in the program.

I worked with our technology facilitator to learn how to use digital photo frames and how to incorporate the photo frames into various lessons. I came up with the idea of using the frames while conducting dissections. The idea was that a video showing step by step instructions on how to dissect a chicken wing would be downloaded onto a memory disk for each frame. The students would then be able to watch the dissection video before the actual dissection, then start the video over again and sync it with the actual dissection. Watching the video beforehand gave the students a good idea of what the end result should be. The syncing of the video with the actual procedure allowed students to be able to determine what structure of the chicken wing they were looking at - muscle, tendon, ligament, cartilage, etc. The experiment of using the digital photo frames turned out really well. The video allowed students to spend more time actually doing the lab than raising their hands to ask questions about what they were doing and what they were looking at. I was able to go to each table and spend time quizzing the students on their dissection procedures and their familiarity with the structures of the chicken wing. Another unexpected benefit was the photo frame allowed more of the students to become involved in the dissection - especially those students who did not want to actually do the dissection (i.e. those that thought it yucky or might get sick).
 * Chicken Wing Dissection** -