Reflective Journal

This is where I will be posting weekly reflections (in reverse chronological order) on my learning experiences. This will be a useful tool for assessment in a variety of ways: it will be a tool for self-assessment and a way to appreciate my own progress; it will provide a way for our instructor to see where I am in my learning and what guidance or encouragement will help me to learn more; it will provide another path for interacting with and learning from/alongside of my classmates.

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL FOR WEEK SEVEN

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Week seven has been the biggest challenge so far, but it’s been very rewarding as well. This was the time to pull together all of our work from the past several weeks and create something new. I found myself re-reading articles, reviewing our team’s toolbox, finding guidance from the various checklists and rubrics from our instructor and learning from the examples of past students.

Our final projects required that we increase our technical skills. I’ve learned how to use another site development tool (weebly), become better acquainted with wordle, and finally had a chance to learn more about Glogster. Understanding why we are selecting certain tools is key to developing a course that will ultimately make sense and allow or students to deepen their learning.

Personal learning notes and 'aha' moments - what I've learned new this week:

I found myself writing and re-writing as I put together my final project. I found that the more I reviewed my materials, the more sense they made as a whole. It’s easier to appreciate now what it means to have objectives, activities, and assessments aligned.

I found that a lot of my "aha" moments came while I was wrestling with Weebly. It’s especially helpful for me to have worked out some of the technical issues as I attempted to upload images and documents. Having had this experience, I’ll be better equipped to assist my students as they learn the ins and outs of new tools. 

another thought 8/6/2012--
While posting documents in weebly, I had to figure out how to post things such as charts and .jpg images of concepts maps.
With the help of a weebly tech (they do respond promptly to their queries!), I learned how to add alternative versions of some of my documents. I also discovered that Scrib'd, which is used on weebly for posting and reading documents, does not play well with the iPad since Scrib'd requires Flash. By wrestling with these problems, I was able to come up with solutions that will further enhance the student-centered learning environment. Thus, I am able to ensure that the platform and tools required for the course won't be a barrier to them.

Notes of collaboration with classmates:

We were to work independently on our final projects, but come back together as a group to view and comment on one another’s projects.  An interesting method of collaborating, however, came when I found myself re-visiting our team’s toolbox. Could we call this “archival collaboration”? Online courses depend greatly on collaboration and strong community spirit. I can certainly say that this class community was with me in spirit as I thought of everyone slogging away at this multi-faceted final. I’ve just begun reading some of their projects and I am mighty impressed! I know I will be continuing to learn from them. Jenni addressed us as “Assessment Family.” I like that! One more week to go to gather ‘round for family talk about our work. 

more thoughts 8/6/2012---
After writing my reflective journal about the past week, I stayed on line for a while to look at more of my classmates' work. During that time, I also had the opportunity to read some response to the draft of my final project.

I was able to change several things on my project site in response to my classmate's recommendations. These changes improved the site. Having other eyes on my work to trigger improvement rather than give a grade is a great way to learn. It really is an encouraging process.

While browsing through my classmates' projects, I am impressed yet again by the wealth of talent and varied perspectives that are available to me here. I've learned about even more tools in addition to those that our team toolbox projects brought to my attention. The principles and methods of the course are here for us to experience!

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL FOR WEEK SIX

Saturday, July 28 2012

The objectives for this week’s work included:

• learning to use online survey software
• developing a pre-course survey for an online course that we will each develop over these next couple of weeks
• read and discuss case-study articles that address various kinds of assessments (learner self-assessments, team assessments, and instructors’ assessments), the use of rubrics, and also the importance of learner-centered environments in online course design
• become more aware of the nature of “cybercoaching” as we receive it from our instructor as well as practice it with our classmates
• and, finally “consolidate learning in preparation for development of [our] final project[s]” as stated in our syllabus for Module 6

Personal learning notes and 'aha' moments - what I've learned new this week:

While I had some familiarity with Survey Monkey through my own occasional use and through my classmate’s wiki presentation (Thanks, Jenni!) it was a challenge to create a survey that would fit the bill. We were asked to create a pre-course survey to collect data that would enable us to personalize our course to meet our learners’ needs. I began this task by writing questions that simply asked information I’d like to know about my students’ experience with research and technology. As I became more aware that I was losing my sense of purpose in developing the survey, I re-read the “Survey Checklist” that Jim (our instructor) included for us.

My “aha” moment?  Yes! Rubrics in any form really do help! I kept re-reading the checklist as I worked my way towards writing ten effective questions.

Not only did the checklist help me to head in the right direction, it also reminded me that this list  provided yet another form of “assessment for learning.” The checklist made it clear that we would not be graded on the presence or absence of various features, we just needed to aim to include all the features in our first attempts.

As with our other activities in this class, there are multiple opportunities to make an effort, make mistakes, get feedback, ask questions, and adjust our final products to reflect what we’ve been learning along the way. I appreciate this approach and hope to build it in to my future courses.

Notes of collaboration with classmates:

While we had a couple of opportunities to discuss the development of our final projects, I’m guessing that most of us are deep into writing our final projects and putting together websites, or blogs, or wikis to house and present our work.

I found myself dipping into the discussion area less frequently than in the past. I’m spending more time looking at the final project description pages and copies of my past work with rubrics and taxonomy-writing.

And now it’s time to get back to project development!

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL FOR WEEK FOUR

Monday, July 16 2012

The centerpiece of this week’s work was a team-produced online assessment toolkit. It was a real challenge that required a lot of contact with our teammates, much individual research, and stretching our technical skills.

Personal learning notes of the week:

I took a tour through many tools this week in a number of ways:

• in order to select the tool for my own focus, I dipped into everything on the list of categories we were given (including such things as collaboration, reflection, and course-tracking tools). In doing so, I learned how many tools have morphed into new ones or been gobbled up and folded into bigger entities.
• I read through my teammates' presentations during and after the building process, learning some very nifty tips!
• I read or am continuing to read other teams’ offerings and I’m getting the inside scoop on and some surprising tidbits about many more tools.

I’ve especially appreciated learning about some of the problems, pitfalls, and solutions involved in assessing group projects. The rubric we used to evaluate ourselves and our teammates is likely to remain in my future teaching toolkit.

I'm still trying to get a handle on writing learning objectives. Reading through my classmates' objectives will be helpful. We are all in this together!

Comments on 'aha' moments - what I've learned new!

It was a real eye-opener to have a look behind the scenes of a web-conference platform that was brand new to me. Having attended many webinars and participated in quite a few online meetings, I was happy to have the opportunity to get a view through the lens of a course designer or moderator.

Unfortunately, my Blackboard Connect (in the peer-to-peer collaboration category) trial ends after 30 days. My own institution does not use it, but my experience will figure in future tech conversations.

In the course of my research, I discovered one especially helpful website:  Classroom 2.0 [ http://www.classroom20.com/  ]

This site is chock-full of resources for anyone interested in “…web 2.0, Social Media, and Participative Technologies in the classroom.” 

You will find an incredible array of recorded sessions from the 2012 Social Learning Summit, presented via the Blackboard Connect platform. You won’t need to be a Blackboard user in order to get access to these wonderful examples of learning with technology. This page is a goldmine! http://www.classroom20.com/page/2012-recordings

Notes of collaboration with classmates.

It made sense to contact teammates as soon as possible. This wasn’t as easy as it could have been. The D2L upgrade had a number of disruptive effects. Not everything was online or updated as we expected. It took perseverance and real determination to stick with finding a communication method that worked for our group. I looked frequently for our area in the Groups discussion, but it took a while for that to show up. We tried e-mail to begin with, but this proved to be a little confusing. If we don’t remember to “reply all,” someone will be left out of the loop. If someone’s internet connection isn’t available, it makes for a slow or interrupted response trail. If members are juggling jobs and family commitments, that can put a strain on communication as well. (I was so impressed by the commitment and energy of my teammates!) 

Once we were able to start using the groups area, we were able to hit our stride. We all had different schedules and commitments and work speeds, so keeping up was sometimes a challenge for me.

I especially appreciated the enthusiasm and humor in my teammates’ messages! Humor gave me a boost, encouraged and inspired me. It also took the edge off some of the tougher challenges. Our team showed a great blend of brain and heart!

An added bonus in our team work was hearing the perspectives of folks in fields different from mine. While we all confessed to not being fond of team projects, we managed rather well. I struggled with pacing and imagine my quicker teammates would have appreciated an earlier finish, but we finished ahead of the actual deadline. I still struggle with balancing research with final synthesis. Flexible teammates were a real boon: folks stepped up to fill in where needed, make judgment calls that worked, and get the job done.

Find my team’s toolkit here:

https://teamswedishchef.wikispaces.com/Team+Swedish+Chef

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL FOR WEEK THREE

Saturday into Sunday, July 7  & 8, 2012

This has been a tough week for everyone in this course. Upgrading essential software in the middle of a course is not a good idea. Expecting to use an untried iteration of a platform is not a good idea. Having flexible, determined, (usually) good-humored students IS a good idea.

When D2L was upgraded, all hell seemed to break loose. The site was up, the site was down. When the site was up, the links didn’t work consistently. In one instance, I had to completely reload a browser to get consistent texts.

Some of the good news/bad news story: I improvised by doing quite a bit of searching on my own for articles or sites relevant to this week’s topics. The bad news: that took a lot of time.

I found the upgrade problems very disorienting. This meant that I put in a lot of effort simply “orienteering,” re-grouping and forging on. I felt out-of-step all week.

I’m finishing up Module 3 way too late. I should be starting Module 4 now and this is disappointing.

Although I know that skimming and making choices among a wide field of possible resources is the name of the game here, it is difficult to leave classmates’ discussion postings unanswered and sometimes even unread.

Learning new applications as well as new concepts takes a considerable investment of time. Inspiration looks simple, but I’m still getting the hang of it. Thankfully, I saved my initial map as an Inspiration file that I can continue to tweak. Now I know how to turn that into a .jpg or a .pdf  That’s an accomplishment that will allow me to edit my blog posting or future attachments.

Of course, before learning how to post my current concept map, I had to learn how to create the “ingredients.” I haven’t ever developed threesomes like this : learning objective married to an activity and connected to an assessment!

I found lists of appropriate action words as well as charts and graphics explaining how to write learning objectives especially useful! I’ve read and re-read both sources listed in our course pages as well as some that I found online. One external source that I found particularly helpful was Henrietta Siemens’s presentation, “Web 2.0 Tools for Assessment? How to choose web-based tools to measure online student achievement”  

I’m not certain that I’m on the right track with the concept map and the learning objectives, but I think I have a good beginning here. I await instructor feedback.

Addendum: I decided to give the concept map another go. I wasn't at all happy with my first effort. It was difficult to read, unwieldy and pretty ugly! Yes, we do learn from one another here. I'm happy to be able to visit classmates' blogs to see and read about their efforts. Thanks, folks!

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL FOR WEEKS ONE AND TWO

Thursday, June 28, 2012  8:25 pm

I expect to be entering some of my reflections by the end of this second week and weekly throughout the rest of this term. At the moment, I need to return to our discussion area and work there. STOUT will be updating the system overnight, so we are all playing "beat the clock" to enter more of our work!


Friday into Saturday, June 29 into 30, 2012 12:27 AM

I know that I am not the only one in this class that spends hours late into the night on coursework. I definitely need to call it a night. Tomorrow I'll do a more general reflection.

For now, I want to note what brave and persistent souls teachers are! Be they new or seasoned, my classmates are willing to discuss what it's like to try something completely new (read: terrifying) and have a less than satisfying, successful experience. To keep going, to reflect, to stick with it and become better--that is definitely admirable!

I just read through a wonderful discussion thread; that's why I'm gushing about their greatness!

Saturday, June 30, 2012 8:30 PM

I’ll admit that I’ve had several, “Why am I doing this?” moments in the last two weeks. After all, it’s summertime. I had a particularly rough year with at least one big unexpected bump in the road that took some months to bounce back from. There are always challenging changes happening in my field and in my workplace. Wouldn’t it have made a world of sense to say, “Time for a mini-sabbatical. Take the summer off.” How tempting. How renewing. Why not?

Why do I have friends who encourage me when I say, “How about this course? Are you interested in this conference? What do you think of planning together for these changes? Wouldn’t you like to learn more about X together?”

Why don’t I know folks who would say, “Stop! Take a break!” Well, I just don’t.

Online courses certainly stretch my abilities. They are enormously time-consuming. They are tightly-scheduled. They could easily expand into double the time-frame without adding any content at all.

I’d like to see a search box added to the entire course on the D2L site. I use so much time looking for that-one-thing-that-I-know-I-saw-somewhere-and-I-know-I-will-have-to-account-for-on-the checklist.

I’d like to improve my time management ability. I haven’t gotten a good hold on how to adjust my linear working style to a non-linear space. Do I read all the linked items? How much time can I afford to invest in learning a new tool (given how many other things are required in each module)?

While the discussion area is the heart of the course, I know how much time it takes for me to work through the activities, so I tend to move in that direction first.

Some of the best things that brought me back from the “Shouldn’t I learn to have a vacation?” edge were:

·       reading a discussion thread about learning from and through a very difficult, not currently successful teaching experience--Those folks worked through the inexperienced times and persevered as teachers. It was inspiring to “listen in.”

·       a comment from a classmate in the discussion area that she liked an idea I proposed and something I used on my blog—That made me feel so much better about the enormous amount of time it took to figure out how to make blogger work!

·       a reading that discussed in depth many of the teaching techniques I’ve seen some of our best teachers using

·       a TED talk posted by a classmate about a very, very good teacher and admirable human being, John Hunter.

The phrase that is most memorable for me now is: “Assessment for learning” rather than “Assessment of learning.”

On to Module Three and new adventures with Team Swedish Chef (You know who you are!)