Student & Teacher in Online Classrooms

As I have spent the past two years as a student in an online classroom, my eyes have been opened wide to a new kind of learning.  This classroom design offers more than I ever would have imagined.  Prior to starting this program, University of Illinois Curriculum, Technology, and Education Reform,  I thought that an online program would be lacking in interaction – boy was I wrong.  I truly feel that I interact with my classmates and instructors more often and on a more complex level than I ever have in a face to face environment.  I think that our conversations are more carefully planned and thought provoking than face to face conversations.  Take a moment to think about all of the times that you have left a conversation and thought “oh I should have said this” or “I wish I would have worded this more clearly, I should have said…”.   In an online environment, you have time to construct those complex thoughts and you can always, easily, go back and review the conversations and revisit the conversation, and add to it. 

Tonight, I was given the opportunity to lead an online discussion.  Although the thought terrified me at first, I got through it easily (actually the time limit expired long before I was ready for it to – the teacher in me could have continued on).  Every week I sit, so to speak, in the Elluminate classroom and listen to the instructor and follow the chat in the chat box and absorb all of the information.  This week was different.   For 10 minutes, I got to be the “instructor”.  As I shared my information, I felt overwhelmed by all of the interaction going on.  I have always considered myself a great multitasker, but tonight I felt overwhelmed by the need to continue to talk fluently and yet read the chat box at the same time.  I finished my ten minutes and felt the need to defeat the multitasking beast – the need to practice and continue to learn how to create a discussion online in which I can speak and read and facilitate.   Although I do not see a need for elluminate or online discussion in my classroom (in my high school of 200 kids), I do see the need to teach students to use the tools of the future.  Every student will likely encounter an online classroom, an online discussion or meeting, at some time in their future.  As teachers, we need to prepare them for THEIR WORLD, the world that they live in now and more importantly, the world that they will be living in during their adult lives.

Instructional Video

I have really enjoyed creating this instructional video.  It is not perfect, there are many details about it that I would like to tweak (like creating a new voice for myself – does anyone like to hear their own recorded voice- yuck!)  but it will have to do for now.  This is one of my all time favorite projects.  I used to teach it in JH math.  I started with a symmetry unit and we looked for symmetry in the world – pictures, outside, buildings…   Then we talked about how archeologists recreated ancient buildings from drawings.  This led right into the 2D to 3D creations shown in the video.   I think there is also value in talking about volume and surface area without involving formulas.  If you ask JH kids about volume and surface area – they most likely will give you a formula instead of telling you what it means.  But, the best part of this project is the final project.  I give the students a quite large set of 3 2D drawings of a building (top, front, and right hand sides) and ask them to create it in 3D.  Every student gets a different building and they create it on cardboard with sugar cubes and glue.  The grade sheet is the same for everyone – they are graded on finding the maximum building and finding the volume and surface area.  The best part is that I can choose the difficulty of each student’s final assessment based on their individual ability level.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that with every assignment – challenge every kid and still give them the chance at success!   Anyway – here is my video – hope you like it.    Also, if you would like a copy of the worksheets and the rest of the unit – reply here – it is quite a large packet but I could mail it to you! 

Teachable Moment – Calculus

Something really cool happened today.  I was searching through some blogs to see if I could find some new cool ideas for my math class and I happened upon a blog (zerodivides.net) with a hilarious, creative, and well made video about Calculus.  It is a YouTube video named “I Will Derive”.   The video is about a student having trouble with a test and the lyrics are incredibly done.  The video talks about velocity and acceleration, tangent lines, slope, and finding maximums, all of which are topics that we have just recently covered in my AP Calc class.  It is not often that we get to watch videos in math, and especially not funny ones, so I decided that we would watch this video.  My seniors were so excited – like kids in a candy store.  I explained that we would watch once for entertainment value and then watch it again and they had to write down five things about Calculus that were mentioned or explained in the video.  They loved doing it and we even watched a third time and paused the video to make sure they got it all.  It was a fun break from the gruelly topic of the day and they learned something in the midst of all the fun.   I LOVE days like this.   Here is the video for your enjoyment:

Digital Story Telling

For several years now I have created videos for my cheerleaders and I have also created graduation and anniversary videos for my friends and family.  With my newest assignment, I have added a new dimension in my digital story telling adventures.  This assignment could have been a personal movie – which is always a fun video to create – and I have created one in the past (and then modified it to follow the Fair Use guidelines – oops)  Take a look at my  beautiful family. 

But my real challenge came when, just before this assignment was due, our superintendent came to me, I am the teacher’s union president, with an idea for a teacher celebration.  He wanted to have a luncheon during our school improvement day and honor the teachers for their hard work.  He wanted to celebrate our test scores and other successes.  This was to be a big production with the school board invited and other important people in our small town.  My first thought was “Yikes – he wants me to speak”  My next thought was to combine my photostory assignment with this speaking assignment and create a photostory to highlight our test scores (and it also got me out of saying too much).   The next day I sent out an email telling the teachers about my photostory assignment (but not the celebration – it was supposed to be a surprise) and I asked the teachers for pictures of students engaged in learning.  The superintendent sent me an email right away saying “you are a clever one” (he thought I made up the assignment and was using it as a cover).   The teachers started sending me all kinds of pictures – it was awesome to see all the cool stuff that they do in their classes.  I began to put together my story and decided that stats are really boring (but important) so I decided to involve some kids and of course they loved helping me!!!   The day of the meeting came and half an hour before the meeting was supposed to start, we lost power in the entire school (it was a beautiful sunny day).  Although I had once dreaded giving this speech, I was now looking forward to showing the video that I had spent so much time on.  We are lucky to have our head custodian live across the street and we ran power cords to his house to provide the electricity to show the video and power the microphones.   The teachers loved the video!     My next adventure will be to find a way to have my students create photostories in my math class.  This should prove to be an exciting adventure.

Online Collaboration/Group Projects

Wow – it happened again – a COOL tech experience.   I have been working on a cocurricular (math-science) project with our science teacher.  We have had plans to create a Calculus/Physics project for the end of the year (after the AP exams) and we are finally getting it started.  Anyway, I am at  home with sick children and I was working on the project, web-based, and had asked him to take a look during his prep period.  He called me at home with suggestions and as we talked, I modified, he refreshed his screen, and PRESTO the changes were instant.  It was so cool to be able to collaborate on a project when we were in two different places.

Evaluation Tools

I just love it when I learn something and I think “when will I ever use this” and then I find myself using it!  What a great feeling!   Well that has happened to me a lot lately.  When I took EPSY 474 and we had to evaluate a program, I thought when will I ever need to go through of all of this work.  Well since then, I have had occasion to use many of the things that I learned in that class.  OK, so I have not done a formal evaluation (and I hope I never have to) but I have used the surveying tools that I learned in that class.   I LOVE SURVEYMONKEY.COM !!  I am president of our local teacher’s union and I have had several occasions to create short surveys using surveymonkey.com .   It is FREE and very simple to use.  I have created a several question survey and sent it out to all of the teachers.  The great part is that I don’t get bombarded with emails answering my questions but instead surveymonkey tallies it all up for me.   The teachers love it because they click on a link and check some boxes and it is done (and anonymous).   (Oh and in case you are thinking like a teacher and wonder if they are cheating – you can set it to only allow one response per computer so people can’t “vote” more than once)

Well, our school is getting online grades that parents can check (yes some of you are probably thinking – you don’t have that yet – well we will in a couple of weeks).  Well, I teamed up with our tech guy and learned the teacher part of the software and then trained the other teachers.  We are ready to roll it out to parents and we decided to start with a trial group of parents, to make sure that everything is working ok before we open it up to the masses (a great idea I think – and 474 got my wheels turning on this idea).  We plan to give them a short training session (tomorrow actually) and then survey them (thanks to 474) and see what they liked and didn’t like – if they needed more training, what we could do better to prepare them…   Anyway, I think that some of the program evaluation training has helped me to look at this training opportunity in a different way.  I am hoping that everything runs smoothly (and with technology you never know).

I guess this is one of those “AHA” moments that I see my students have now and then.  The “AHA” moments are the fuel in my teaching fire!

Use of Wikis in Education

I must admit that, prior to starting graduate school, I had never heard of a wiki.  My first encounter with Wikis was a little overwhelming (EPSY 490 Educational Psychology) and we were to create a brand new wiki page and contribute to 25 others.  Wow, how was I ever going to complete that?   Well I did and I will admit that once I got used to it, it was kind of fun.   I enjoyed the fact that I could read an article and add to it, or comment, or add a testimonial of something that happened to me or happened in my classroom.   I also enjoyed the fact that I could read an article and get more than the authors perspective and I could add my perspective even if I didn’t agree or saw a different “twist”.  I have since used wikis to search for information or for answers to problems.

Since then, I have used Wikis for a different purpose.  In EPSY 415, my project group used a Wiki to finish a project/final paper.  It was cool to see what started as our workspace, where we wrote thoughts and commented on each others work, turn into our final product.  All of this happened in the same wiki space.  It gave a whole new meaning to “research paper”.  It was the first “paper” that I have ever written that included video and hyperlinks and pictures.   It also gave me a new perspective to citing sources.  I LOVE being able to create links rather than use MLA or APA or any other style.

Now with this class, EPSY 556, I have created a Wiki for my personal use.  I am hoping to create a personal story and maybe make some connections with old friends whose lives, like mine, or chaotic.  Perhaps with a wiki, we will be able to keep in touch and rekindle the connections that we used to have.

I would like to find a way to incorporate wikis into my classroom teaching.  I know that wikis can be a valuable learning tool.  (Sometimes, these tools are difficult to incorporate into a math class – one because it is math

Initial Thoughts about the Future of Education

As a little girl, I dreamt about being a teacher someday.  I wanted to be just like all of the wonderful teachers that I had in school.  I wanted to be the one to teach other kids all of the wonderful things that my teachers taught me and I wanted to do it just like they did.   Now I am a teacher and I have realized that I fulfilled only part of my dream, I am a teacher and I do believe that I teach my students many, many wonderful things but I will never be able to teach just like my teachers taught me.   The world today is very different than the world that I grew up in.  Students don’t come to class and rely on the teacher and the textbook to present all of the information anymore.  Computers and especially the internet have drastically changed education.  Today’s children have been born into a digital society and that is how they are “programmed” to learn.  They have learned through digital technologies since they were toddlers.  They have developed logic skills through gaming, even as a young child.   They have developed social skills through email, instant messaging, texting, and through virtual communities such as MySpace and Facebook.  They live in a different world than I did when I was their age.   Now, as an educator, my job is much bigger than I thought it would be when I was a little girl.  My job is to learn about their lives and their world and develop ways to teach my knowledge using their tools.  As adults in this digital world, we need to learn about the digital world we live in so that we can better prepare our children for the world that they live in and, more importantly, the ever changing digital world that they will be living in in the future.