Week 6 of Cedo 550

This week concluded a very interesting class.  I have to say I most, out of everything we did,  enjoyed teaching an online course.  I feel confident that I could do this if I wanted to change what I am doing now.  It is a lot of work, but I think it would be fun and engaging as well.  As for this week in class, I really enjoyed the video called "Shift Happens".  It is a true wake up call as to where are country and children are at this point of time and it shows the importance of being technologically knowledgeable in the 21st century.

Week 5 of Cedo 550

This week was a fun week in Online Facilitation.  I was able to teach my 15 minute lesson on "Qualities of a Successful Online Student."  I felt I did much better than I thought I would do.  I asked many good questions and got my class to share some very good points.  I planned it as an interesting class and got a good grade on it. I think it gave me some very good experience for if I ever teach online in the future.

We also discussed social networking this week.  Overall my feeling of social networking is very positive.  I am part of an online community every day and have been for many years.  I  have been on Facebook since 2007 and really enjoy the opportunities I have to share my personal information and look into what is happening in other people's lives.  As a member of this Stritch Cohort, I also feel I have been in an online community that facilitates learning and sharing of knowledge.  I am very happy with my experiences so far.  


We also investigated the positives and negatives of working on a project collaboratively.  I feel a positive is the ability to bring many ideas together.  When you are only working by yourself, you are limited by your own experiences and ideas.  Have a group to work on a project together really opens up doors and makes your project the best it can be.  On the other hand, the greatest challenge of working collaboratively are those instances when team members do not work together well or there are personality conflicts.  Time is wasted because the members cannot come to a consensus and the product is not developed to the fullest extent.  


This week was a very interesting and useful week, and I continue to enjoy this online facilitation class.  

Week 4 of Cedo 550

This week we have focused on student centered instruction and differentiation of assignments.  Up until this school year, my teaching was very teacher centered.  I did a lot of lecturing and sharing of notes.  After going through Stritch, however, I have picked up a lot of strategies and have been changing the way I have been teaching to a more student centered approach.  I am putting most of my time into switching from teacher centered to student center learning in my Civics class.  The students are given a scenario and are expected to investigate the information, instead of me sharing every little bit of information with the students.  We still hold discussions, with me as the facilitator, but after the students have investigated the information asked of them.  I have also helped my team teacher in Life Science do teaching in this way as well. 

We were instructed to make an authentic assessment for our newly differentiated lesson.  I found that rubrics  really rate what the student is learning.  This works very well with the assignments I give in Civics class. I can honestly show where the student is based on what is expected of the student and what type of input the student put into his/her assignment.   I like the rubric I made because I can accurately see where they did well and were they were lacking.  It also shows them that I am stressing that they learn the content.  I do grade on spelling and grammar, but for many of my students this is a very difficult thing for them to master and I think it is a good thing for me to show them that their content is worth more than a few spelling errors. 

I really enjoyed learning about more differentiation strategies.  For example, for my civics assignment, I am now going to allow students to share their ideas in pictures and video rather than just text.  This small thing can help many students who tend not to be very skilled in writing.

This week has been very informational and I am looking forward to Tuesday when I can present my class discussion on qualities of a successful online student.