Feedback on Fall Course

* General impressions of taking this 1st online course.
I am impressed with the format and the amount of material/technology and resources that are available to us to enhance and work with students. I just hope we keep moving toward availing ourselves of the tools to work together with the students as they are so tech savvy.

* Have you ever taken an online course before?
I had not taken an online course before. This was my first experience and it was a positive one. My expectations were clearly met and the flexibility of doing it generally at my own pace and at times when I could be available. (Mostly, staying up after my family is asleep) has made is do-able and a convenient way to learn a lot of new material.

* What worked well?
The range of material and resources that I learned was great. I am comfortable with blogging which I had never done before. I use the delicious account all the time to access my most frequently visited sites and it is easier to do from anywhere instead of the "old" way of bookmarking on one computer.

* What was difficult or didn't work well?
The pace and amount of material for my learning curve was a challenge with my life and work although it was so worthwhile. It was my own responsibility and it was nice to overcome the challenge to keep up with the amount of work and keep ahead of the curve.

* Was the structure appropriate and/or how could it be improved?
I liked the structure as it gave me pieces of different things to try and work on throughout the fall. It was nice to see you and the others as resources and learn from them as the process moved along.

* Was the content appropriate and/or how could it be improved?
I liked the content and it was definitely relevant to teaching and to my position as a social worker. It was nice to be abel to be creative to see how to apply it to the teaching and counseling roles. Examples from others was helpful and the more of those the better.

* Did you feel that the teacher was sufficiently accessible and gave you enough support?
Lori was great as she was flexible and supportive.

* Other suggestions you have that would improve future online course offerings.
The personal connection of at least once being abel to put a face with a name was helpful and created greater connection and more meaningful feedback. It might be helpful to see if there was some way to have an online video meeting in the beginning of the course for the face to face in a virtual way if possible.

* Would you recommend this course to others? Why or why not?
I would definitely recommend this course as the technology can drive instruction to new and cutting edge ways that have endless possibilities only limited by our own creativity. it would be nice if we could get to the point where these tools were the norms instead of the anomalies.

* Would you consider taking another online course? Why or why not?
Absolutely as i already took the Spring one and would take another one. I am constantly learning and it takes practice to integrate and apply all of this information and the toools into a useful instructional framework to know how we are directly impacting student achievement.

* What topics do you think would be good for future online courses?
Specific use of these applications with some accountability and group work/department work to apply them to our classrooms, buildings, and student achievement. For instance, a blogging/wikis/podcasts class where each member works together to apply these skills in their classroom and share with the online class as a resource and a learning tool.

Reflections 3 (Link to how I applied what I learned in class)

This has been a great way for me to learn about the technology and be able to apply the uses as practice is what makes things meaningful. As a school social work and a support to the students this process has opened my eyes more so to the world that students are growing up in. I had pong as my first video game and was enthralled with that as an elementary age kid and saw what became the preface to email in college, these kids see those as old school. The nature of technology for them is second nature which seems to be why they can have a second life. Because of the sheer amount of information accessible in front of you on the computer and phones it makes sense to me that there is too much information for one life so you need a second one just to hold the overflow of information. At times, it is exciting and at others overwhelming with the opportunities and differences. My learning curve has come around so that I feel comfortable blogging on topics that are relevant to me and educational. I still have not embraced the value of blogging for social connection, but maybe I will experience the value someday as I learn from my kids. Blogs, wikis, social networking, and social bookmarking are all processes that I feel I have a little knowledge to speak intelligently, but not dangerously about now. I will be trying to incorporate these tools into my practice more so including the MW counseling web page that I have added things to throughout this course as this course has kept me motivated to keep it current. Please check it out and give nay feedback about other things that could be useful. I also am curious and hope to go over the hump with my learning curve on using videos for instructional practice and social/emotional development together with the students.

School 2.0

The technology that is an essential part of our world today and the future is shown in a useful way. The visual picture of the schools of the future is helpful as a visual format to jump off of into ideas and brainstorming. The integrative nature is striking to me. Especially the handheld hardware as it will be interesting to see if we move that far with the technology and still keep a balance of the personal and efficient. I may be traditional, but one of the things I would like to see kept is the buildings as they also personal contact for personal relationships. There is opportunity to create personal relationships amongst businesses , community, and the world through technology that currently do not exist. The balance needs to be to somehow be able to find a way to keep the relationships with our neighbor and develop global relationships as well. Other things that would be useful to keep include the connectivity from building to community to business to parents. It also seems to give a good framework for the fundamentals necessary to provide an infrastructure for schools for the future. The challenges will be how to take the necessary steps to do it in a thoughtful way.

Thoughts on Dr. Zhao's Podcasts

The topics that struck me regarding Dr. Zhao's podcast were about the future of education, not so much about what is wrong with it now. Those that seemed vital included:
1. the global nature of the future for our students t
2. The need to shift away from using technology as a way to teach traditionally and instead allowing the student to feel like a contributing individual in the global community.

I liked the theme that seems to come up again and again of farm life whether in China or Nebraska or locally that every individual contributing to the community is a valued member working the crops and with each other. It was interesting to hear how vastly different teaching can be using technology differently. The intriguing example of how Dr. Z has developed a mandarin chinese curriculum online with an island on second life that helps to immerse you in the language with the tools to learn the curriculum would be fascinating to put some creative minds on and apply locally. Are any of our classrooms and students speaking virtually or through technology to other cultures and languages as he describes?
This podcast was especially interesting for me as an alum of Michigan State, where he is from, and how distance learning is changing the make up of standard based classes in a room not in virtual reality. It helped to link some things that had started with distance learning when I was there and my professors were pulled to start the distance learning initiatives. it is nice to see how they are progressing across the board. I wonder if other universities are all in line with this and at what point it will move down to the secondary and elementary schools as much?

Collaborative Project Idea

This is an idea to ask students to use their creativity to create a social/emotional lesson that is meaningful to them and future students.

Your team is in charge of a company in the year 2025 that creates cyber-human robots. You have been able to get them to provide information, but they are lacking the social and emotional humanity that you had hoped in order to be successfully interact with each other and humans. There are other companies working toward the same goal.

Your company will not survive if you can not remedy this problem. In order to do so, you must determine the three most important social skills that are essential to getting along with each other and then figure out a way to teach these skills to the robots. Keep in mind they process information through any means, so good luck in the following:
1. Identify the three most important social skills and how you made this decision
2. Determine what other team members you need to access to be successful
2. Create an effective plan for teaching these three skills to the robots
3. Develop a way to determine if you have been successful in teaching the robots each of the skills.

Good luck on your mission and on saving your company.

Let me know how it goes as we may need this before 2025

This lesson could address students at all levels. it allows for collaborative teaming to address social and emotional development. The ideas in the blog were really useful and could force some different thinking of allowing students to teach us the technology and our role os to mentor and guide them through the morality of it all.

Reflections 2 Post

Of the tools that we have used thus far, I think the one I am most likely to use is the video resource access. I found myself turning to it, in the Dimensions of Learning class that I just completed, as a more interesting way to present an idea. We presented on how to teach students how to construct support for your argument. One of the things that popped into my head was the Argument sketch from Monty Python (I know this probably dates me and definitely tells something about my sense of humor. It was relatively easy from this class and the knowledge of my partner to embed the link into out power point presentation and include part of the video to engage the class and helpful help them remember the concept as a tool in the classroom.

Additionally, am going to attempt to work with a couple of people to create social skills lessons done by the kids at school to teach other kids social skills. I hope to have a few up by the end of the year. Once we do the first one, I think the pothers will be that much easier to complete.

If anyone has other ideas or would like to help let me know.

Wikis

I have just learned about wikis and they seem like they could be a very useful educational tool if used in the classroom, building, or with parents. It seems like having a forum to be able to build on ideas as well as showcase work that others can comment and add information about is a creative collaborative tool. I liked the Village Elementary wiki that has examples of student work and would like to see if anyone is using it as a tool at the middle and high school level.

In the videos for training, it talked about putting upcoming meeting agendas out on the wiki with documents to be discussed and then coming together with greater knowledge and having moved further ahead in the process. It seems using the voice and other tools in a wiki would eliminate the need to have meetings, except for getting that personal connection of a face to face. There are some meetings it seems this would be appropriate to do like updating a document or making some decisions about a student's work or educational plan.

New Resources

I have been exploring through this class some additional resources for school and teachers including Teachertube, Next Vista for learning, Youtube, and Clipblast. I was familiar with Youtube before as it seems Youtube has made it onto many other websites as it seems to be everywhere.
The additional sites make a little more focused sense to me except Clipblast which seems to be like Youtube, but does not have that much content on it. Teachertube seems to have a lot of resources and also some time wasters like Youtube. It appears that the difference in the control of the site and the for profit type. Teachertube seems to be a focused forum for teachers, but without the moderation to make sure it is useful or relevant. Next Vista appears to be a little more restricted in allowing their videos on their site. The videos are not as prolific, but seem to be relevant to teaching. I learned a lot more about Ukiyoe, the history wood block printing process in Japan from their featured video.
All of the sites appear to be fairly easy to use of you have reached the learning curve of searching for videos through Youtube it is pretty similar. I like that there is a blog which can tell you a little more about the video prior to checking it out. it also seems to be a chance to connect people in similar curriculum of they were to use it all the time.
I could see using it with students well to be a forum for their projects and as a resource for research. There were a few mental health videos which appeared to be research on particular mental health disorders. These seem to be good jumping off points for student to do further research and use technology. I could see filming a number of social skills in role plays (eye contact, entering a group, manners, etc.) that would be fun to video and put on a web site like this to teach themselves and other students how to socially interact with other in addition to particular course content. It will also be helpful in my role as a resource to teachers.

How is blogging

How has my blogging experience been thus far?

I would say I am learning at a modern pace. The blogging process is simpler than i had thought prior to this course. The most difficult thing has been to remember which user name and which password goes with each account and web site as it has been a challenge logging them into my short term memory.

I have found a lot of great resources by linking onto others blogs and resources as well as a never ending wealth of information. There is always something curious that can lead me to the next thing.

As far as using it into the future, I hope to be able to use it as a communication tool kit a few ways. One, I hope to be able to speak to others within my department and outside of my department sharing resources knowledge and perspective.

It would be exciting to be able to have resources for different topics within the counselor/mental health/substance abuse/art therapy worlds to bridge these resources with the wealth of resources within the school as well.

Also, I hope to be able to develop it into a resource for parents and students to feel comfortable accessing and working together to support the students through the counseling department. I hope to be able to reach students where they are and make it convenient for their parents to access the department as well. Overall, I hope to use blogging as a collaborative tool to support our students.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog for professional development discussion. I hope to learn a lot and thanks for visiting.