Reflection 13

This week we are starting to write our philosophy. I'm sort of loss of what is being asked. When I think of a philosophy, I think of a teaching philosophy, what do I want my students to get out... how do I want to teach, include in my lessons, prep....etc So for this philosophy I'm not sure how to explain it. I think we are saying how learning occurs virtually and online. I know through this course I learned online using the Google Hangout a lot. Whether it was writing to our team after hours, or meeting with the team or 1-1 on a hangout (video call). We researched pedagogy and different learning methods. It's so fresh in my mind, that the big project we created was our online course. It turned out to be an online training course for Survivalcraft which was created through a weekly site.

I have mentioned this before, but to have a successful learning environment especially online, there needs to be communication within the group and relationships built. It's important for everyone to feel apart of the group and receive immediate feedback. Some other things to remember when creating an online course or taking one. Is to stay up with the times. Things are changing all the time. New iPhones are being invented, new computer screens. Now they have a screen that is bent. Which is very cool. During our reading we read about all different countries and their online learning environment. We need to have an area where everyone has equal access, incase they can't get the same education/classes as others.

This week and next I'm gathering my thoughts and aligning them how they connect to the standards from this course. At least I think that's what I'm supposed to do. I feel that our group is kind of confused on the requirements for the philosophy. It would be nice to have an example to go by or an outline to look at when creating our philosophy.

Mia sent questions to go by for this reflection so I'm going to answer them below:

• What are your initial thoughts and feelings about it

I enjoyed this class. There was a lot of reading which made my brain hurt. The online course, which turned into a training course was a much better option that creating an online course and another one to do in a classroom... I think we should work on the online course, slowly and each part at a time (assignments, throughout the week). I think this will make it not be such a huge project at the last minute. Also we can review each part/section at a time and review tweak as much needed. 

For the philosophy, I'm lost, I don't know where to start. I think I know what I'm doing, but I will send an email for clarification.

• what is hard about it and what is easy?
• Knowing what is being asked, or how to start. Reflecting putting my own opinion on the topic.
• what are the resources you think you’ll need,
• blogs, other information that goes with my opinion and thoughts on learning online and virtually
• do you have what you need to write it,
• I don't think so, I'll use the blogs from the course to get an idea, but I don't have an outline to use
• where are the gaps?
• We never really went over any part that could be included, so just getting a topic to write a philosophy, I don't know what weeks we read about that might be irrelevant or relevant to the philosophy. It would  be nice to work on the philosophy a section at a time throughout the course. Maybe we did, but it's not clear to me if we did this. 

Week 12 Reflection

This week we used the Quality Matrix Rubric to assess our website we created for teachers. The website is an online training course for teachers to complete before their students enter Survivalcraft. The rubric was very informative. Before I go into details about the rubric, I want to talk about the process of this whole project. First I'm skeptical at doing projects with a large group. The reason is it's out of my hands whether the material gets completed and how well it gets completed. Having said that, the online training weekly site the Oltak team created is phenomenal! We have a few areas to improve on, but I was very pleased at all the work and time my colleagues used to work on the project.

This project took about 2 weeks to create and many hours to complete. I know I was on my computer 4-5 hours each day working on just my section. It's amazing how long it takes to create a successful training on MinecraftEdu tools. I created tutorial videos, screenshots of each tool and wrote a description and challenge teachers would have to complete to show they had understood my portion of the training and the content.

When I finished with my portion, I looked over other peers areas. I helped Mia and reviewed her work, after she asked me to. She did a great job. We had a little difficulty with the design of forms, but other than that everything worked out fine. During this week, we were contacted by a teacher who said when they started the training (my portion) they finished the controls page and then it stopped and didn't know where to go next. My idea was for teachers to complete each section, log into Google Community and complete the challenge. Then they would have to go back to the website and scroll down to the next section. I purposely left tabs to the next section out of my training, so teachers wouldn't scroll through the whole thing and not complete the challenges. After I received the comment from the teacher, I changed my thought process and added tabs to each section that would help guide teachers and know what was coming up next for their training. On my last section I noticed that it would stop and teachers probably wouldn't know where to go... even though it's a drop down menu at the top of our website. So, I wrote instructions and explained how they finished my training and to click on the LOTF or The Maze Runner tab to start their next training.

The process for this training was pretty intense and hectic. Again we were putting stuff together at the last minute and did a peer review with the rubric after the website address had been forwarded to teachers to start the training. I think if we would have created this website months ago and worked on it throughout the course we wouldn't have spent every waking week day we had and weekends to finish it. Also, if we would have done the peer review ahead of time, the controls tab and areas that need work on would have been spotted, instead of having one of the teachers point it out for us.

I think it makes us look disorganized and a professional website when teachers who are doing the training are the ones finding our mistake. It's important in the future, to review our work before submitting it to the personal completing the training.

For the rubric, I liked having a checklist to go by when creating our training. I think we should have gone through the rubric as a class (in detail) before creating the website and outlined areas that might not have pertained to us or tweaked for our training website. We created an online course, but not one that has assignments teachers turn in to be graded. We have challenges and assessments when teachers upload their completed challenge explanation to the Google Community.

During our meeting last night, we all assessed the website from the rubric and then were given certain areas to talk about and how we graded them. One thing I noticed is the assessment and survey page was not finished. When I went back to review the other sections of the website, I noticed the cover page for the assessment page was blank and it was available to teachers to view, so I quickly wrote a getting started section, which wasn't even my part to work on. This comes back to working in a large group. We rely on everyone to do their part. If a section can't get done on time or something happens, or theres a misunderstanding...etc communication needs to occur within the group. An email or hangout needed to have occurred for all of us to know we needed to pitch in and help get the rest of the sections completed. When someone doesn't complete their section, it brings more work to the rest of the group and stress to make sure every detail is intact in the whole project by the deadline. Also, when the website was given to the teachers to complete and some of the sections are missing it makes the whole team look bad and not efficient with their work.

While going through the rubric we noticed some objectives didn't have the same language, so we are changing it to make sure it all sounds the same "I will be able to..." We also noticed that some sections didn't have objectives and they needed to be added. Also, the guides needed to have the same outline. So Mia and Matthew are going to meet and revamp their guides to were they are designed and sound the same. I think it's important to do this throughout the whole website. Everyone had a different section, but the teachers taking the training don't know how the website was completed. If one section looks crystal clean and makes sense, then another section doesn't... it doesn't look good on Oltak.

I think overall our team did an outstanding job on the website. We have a few areas that need work and hopefully not all of the teachers have taking the training. We should be able to correct the errors and have a very successful training website for teachers to take currently and in the future.

Week 11 Reflection

This week was extremely busy. Our Oltak team created the Survivalcraft Teacher Training Website. It can be found here: Survivalcraft Teacher Training

My section of the website was on MinecraftEdu. I explained the controls to use and all of the teacher tools teachers would have access to during the game. I went into the world and took screen shots and created tutorial videos on how to use each tool. I started each page with an explanation of the tool, showed a picture or a tutorial video on how to use the tool, bullet points on using the tool and ended with a challenge for the teachers to do. The challenge is supposed to provide evidence and assessment the teacher understands the tool. Teachers are supposed to upload screenshots of the evidence to our Survival Craft Google Community.

I have never used weebly before to create a website, I have to say it's my favorite. I will be using weebly from now on. It is extremely easy to design and add links to pages, upload videos from youtube add audio to your postings...etc Excellent tool I learned this week. I am very pleased with our online training website we created. Everyone broke off and created their own section. We finalized tonight (on Easter) the sections and reviewed over them to make sure it looked professional for the teachers. I worked with Mia and read over her section and checked for any grammatical errors. We had a few areas that needed work. The bullets were not lining up correctly after being uploaded and the links for some of the resources were not linked correctly. We worked extremely late and were able to finalize the website with no errors. The other item I found was on the assessment page, the beginning page was completely blank. I quickly filled in the page and wrote a getting started section for teachers to know where to access the rubrics for Survivalcraft. While reviewing the website, I noticed there wasn't any "About Us" section. We had one on our Givercraft website and it's in the standards rubric we're following. I created an About Us page and was able to upload three biographies. I emailed the rest of the team and asked them to upload a biography and a small picture to the website before we sent the link to teachers.

I hope the teachers use this training. Last time for the Giver we had hardly any teachers attend our live training. It would be pretty disappointing if they didn't use this website. It would be a lot of time that was used for nothing. I shouldn't say that, our team did learn a lot on creating an online course and training for teachers. I hope it gets used...

This week for my diffi tool I plan on creating a chest with my team in MinecraftEdu. I also plan on viewing and assessing if teachers have any questions on the tool they are learning from their post in the Survival Craft Google Community. I hope the teachers complete the challenges and understand how to use the tool. I'm looking forward to this week and seeing what the response is from the teachers.

Reflection Week 10

This week was by far my favorite. I don't know if it was due to researching on the upcoming new technology tools or how to stay relevant with change and reminisce the past. Whatever the case was, it was very interesting. While reading my peers blogs, I noticed that we are all on the same page. Matthew mentions how we need to choose a tool that will best fit in our objective. I think teachers and non - educators get caught up in the "new" technology and forget that some of these tools are not useful to use in a classroom. I know people who will trade in their phone when a new one has been made. Now, for me I still have the old iPhone, but am having extreme problems with it. So soon I will trade and buy a new one or change to a phone that's not an apple product. What I have found with my phone and my husbands is once the warranty expires our battery dies super fast and our blue tooth has quit working. The reason I mention this, is with technology everything breaks or stops working at sometime. It's important to stay relevant with the new tool, but know when to upgrade and buy new. Iphones are always updating their phones and marketing new ones. Students could get caught up in the marketing scan, but if they're educated they can save a lot of money. It's important to choose which tool is going to be worthwhile to use for the certain activity or back to teaching, lesson you have planned. It's also important to know how to fix the tool you are working with. My document camera and promethean board continuously has glitches. When you're teaching a lesson, you can't be reading the guide on "how to fix it." To stay relevant, you need to know the tool inside and out. Ali mentioned it's important to have team support. Creating a course has many different sections. It's important to work as a team and have everyone create a certain part. It's like the sport swimming, you race individually, but earn points to help your team. The team with the most points wins the meet. This can be looked on as the same when working as a team when creating an online course. This week, we have decided to not make our own online courses. Mia and I were creating a course that 6th grade teachers could use when teaching about Matthew Henson and Robert Peary. During our class meeting, we have decided that with survivalcraft, the teachers registered are relying on us to present a successful training for them. With all of the other activities we have planned, there wasn't enough time, so we decided to use our training as the online course we're creating. We are going to work as a team. I have the role of creating online tutorial videos for the teacher tools. A challenge is to make the videos 5 minutes or less long. This means, I need to create many tutorial videos for each tool. From our last survey, we received one response and the teacher said they would prefer online videos rather than a face to face meeting. During this week we also discussed how the Lord of the Flies scenarios were probably not school appropriate. I did some research and found some articles that I shared with the group. Turkey is actually thinking of banning Minecraft and Microsoft  is fighting for them not too. It all has to do with survival mode. LOTF scenarios are about the students killing and surviving. I'm worried that if students do this in school, our whole project will be banned in the schools participating. We decided as a group to change the scenarios and make it where the students build the World War setting and work as a team to survive. I hope the scenarios work and there is no negative press from this.
We are meeting early this week to discuss our online training course. We have a lot of work to do, but with team work I'm sure we will create a very successful and informative training for the teachers.

Week 10

HOW CAN WE REMAIN RELEVANT IN DISTANCE LEARNING IN A TIME OF CONSTANT AND ACCELERATED CHANGE?

            In this time of age, things are always drastically changing. I remember when I was a child and my dad was showing me his record collection. He then went on to explain how they would probably not exist anymore-even C.D.’s which was just the new fad at the time. He said it will probably be a little chip that holds all your music in one device. I was sure that it was a off the wall thought, but to my surprise years later the iPod was created, then the IPod mini. It’s amazing how things have changed in just a short amount of time.

            I remember receiving my first cell phone in 8^th grade. Comparing it to the phone now, amazing how it has become super thin, small with a lot more functions on it. When the iPhone first came out, they were extremely expensive. They still are, but the older versions are at least with a discount. For the longest time, I refused to get an iPhone. I didn’t think it was smart to have all of my “eggs in one basket.” I had a Sony camera and iPod and a flip phone/blackberry at the time. I refused to go over to an iPhone. It wasn’t until my husband decided we should go on our own phone plan and my friend kept accessing pinterest on her phone. I was planning my wedding, so pinterest was really on my new watch list. I started to like the iPhone and thought it was actually better that I had a camera and music on one device. Easier to pack and travel with.

            For me to stay relevant in a time of constant and accelerated change is to stay up with the times. It’s important to “stay continually educated and evolve with the changing educational landscape” (Lancaster). I remember the thought of never having an iPhone as I was holding my first one in the AT&T store. The thought of silliness and “why did I ever think that” crossed my mind. It still does. Every vacation my husband and I have taken, I have always used our phone for a picture or a “selfie!” Now with the iPhone you can upload the photo directly to Facebook. I would have never known this, unless I observed my friends on their iPhone and learned from others.

    As an educator I am constantly learning new things to implement into my classroom. This week, I went on a website you may have heard of it, teacherspayteachers.com, If you haven’t heard of it, this website has all different lessons and activities you can do with your students. All you have to do is download them to your computer. All of the lessons are free or $1-12 at the most. On the website you can also sort by grade and subject as well. You can also follow the teacher for any upcoming new products. The website also allows you to upload units for sale. I think the site gets a commission, but some teachers have retired and only use this website for their income. It’s amazing how many teachers use this website and pay for other ideas. This is how you stay relevant.

    You have to “learn as an active rather than a passive process.” (Anderson and Dron). I am constantly learning new things to use in my classroom. I’m taking any training I have extra time for and trying to implement new strategies while teaching. The YouTube video shows ten new future technologies that will change the world. It’s very interesting and disturbing at the same time.

         I can’t find the article, but recently on BBC it explained how students in rural England and India are using a virtual teacher. Throughout the whole reading this week, I kept thinking about this article. Basically the students would walk into the classroom and there would be a computer for them to log in. The students would then start discussing and learning from the teacher that was being projected onto the screen.  In rural areas in Alaska students are given an opportunity to take certain classes that are not offered to them by distance. “Students can learn wherever they are located from instructional resources wherever they are located” (Moore and Kearsley) and this is what distance education is all about. It’s providing an opportunity for students who don’t have the access or the ability to take a course.

         The reading mentioned how some of the videos teachers have created are of low quality and hopefully in the near future have “high-speed access to the World Wide Web becomes more generally available” (Moore and Kearsley) I think this has already occurred. Accessing the web on my phone, laptop, iPad or at school is quite fast. I understand in the areas of the world such as Africa for example, they might not have the ability to receive quick bandwidth. I know when my husband and I visited Africa; it was eye opening and definitely a third world country. The fact that there is some distance education occurring is mind boggling to me. While touring there we didn’t see any homes made out of wood, brick or clay. We saw earth home that were made out of dirt and had bamboo roofs. We met a peace core women who was staying with a family and the description of her environment made me very thankful for what I had when I returned home. Another way to stay relevant is to travel and see what has already started to be developed in other countries.

         This week my students are learning about Johnny Appleseed. Today they had to write how they would change the world for the future. After watching the video and reading the new upcoming technologies, it’s interesting to me that some of my students “inventions” were pretty close to the ones mentioned. Some mentioned were flying cars, robots, 10 foot bed with arms to get breakfast and help people from being late to work (I had to put that one in to make you smile) and from the reading “emotionally responsive toys and robots” (Moore). Whatever the invention is it’s important to remember to choose the technology that will help your students be the most successful.

         There are many technologies that are going to be developed and explained how to implement them into your life or even the classroom, as an educator we need to be knowledgeable of the tool and use with caution. Not every tool is going to work for a student or the class. Depending on the activity, it’s important to choose wisely. To stay relevant it’s important to stay educated and attend trainings as much as possible. It’s also important to travel and experience new things in person and to read literature, watch tutorial videos and follow other educators.

         While working on my bachelors I took a computer class. A consultant from Smart Technology came to present to our class. I remember the presenter mentioning there are “65,000 technology jobs that will be available for your child and we don’t even know what they are yet.” Now, I know what you’re thinking, because I had the same thought. How does this person know that? Is it really that many jobs? As the times are changing and new technology tools are created, I’m starting to think this person was on to something. The key to being successful is to staying knowledgeable, (via twitter, YouTube, blogs, MOOC’s, educational trainings, peer collaboration and literature) of the items being invented and choosing wisely which ones to implement into your classroom and/or job.

Technology Events Timeline

This is an interesting read!  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/7625680.stm

Resources

Moore, M.G., and Kearsley, G. (2011).  Distance Education:  A Systems View of Online Learning, 3^rd Edition.  Belmont: Cengage Learning.

Lancaster, M. (2014, March 27). Retrieved March 26, 2015, from https://farfromhomenearathand.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/how-can-we-remain-relevant-in-distance-learning-in-a-time-of-constant-and-accelerated-change/

Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2011, March 1). Three Generations of Distance Education Pedagogy. Retrieved March 26, 2015, from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/890/1663

The International Association for Distance Learning. (n.d.). Retrieved March 26, 2015, from http://www.iadl.org.uk/Article17.htm

10 Future Technologies That Will Change The World. (2014, November 30). Retrieved March 26, 2015, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMymFYJWW5M

       

Reflection

This is quite late due to our cancelled flight and delay out of state for four days.... As I was reading my peers blogs this week. Matthew mentioned this in his blog "Distance programs need to be flexible to change the technology to meet the needs of its students. In places where internet is not fast and robust, then another form of distance education needs to be used". I think this is spot on. From this week, we learned that there are many distance learning opportunities for students. We also learned that there is a lot of expectations for education in countries. I think to have a successful learning experience by distance, there does need to be more opportunities for students. Not every student can access a computer or have a good internet signal. The part that will be the most difficult is to figure out how we are going to give every single student a quality education. Not everyone has salaries that can afford a distance education program. I think it's important to find a way to give every student an opportunity for an education.

If you think about Alaska compared to the rest of the United States, we have a lot of land. I was just in Michigan and where it takes 8 hours driving to get from Anchorage to Fairbanks, or 6 hours to Valdez to Anchorage... in Michigan to get from Birmingham to Troy only takes 10 minutes, or Birmingham to Detroit takes 40 minutes. My point to this is students in Alaska don't have access to classes like other's due. In Michigan there were 3 Universities and many private schools. In Alaska there are three Universities and a few private schools. Mia mentions the divide, I think it's important to think of the students we are going to be teaching to when creating a distance education course. Do they have the materials to be successful? Can they afford the course requirements or have access to the tools needed to take the course? Also there needs to be certain topics that students can't access in a face to face setting. Students who live in a rural area are given an opportunity to succeed with distance learning. I think it's important to have many different kinds of education. Distance education is occurring all over the world, as we read this week. In some countries it gives women the right to an education. I think when designing a course, we need to have text materials available for students to access anytime (timezones) and study guides as well as tutorial/instructional videos. Distance education is the key to a successful learning environment around our world. It gives everyone access to an education.

Week 9

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: WHAT LESSONS CAN WE TAKE FROM GLOBAL DISTANCE LEARNING EFFORTS?

         When you think of designing an online course, you want to think of the students that you will be creating it for. From the readings this week, I learned that distance learning is based every where in the world. I thought it was interesting, in Pakistan “The rate of literacy and education is much lower for females in Pakistan, particularly in the rural areas, due to poverty and conservative traditions” (Moore and Kearsley). Distance learning has helped girls get an education from their home. They do not have to go to a school or be seen with other men. In “Saudi Arabia, where tradition requires men and women to study in separate environments, distance education enabled women to engage in higher education by studying at home” (Moore and Kearsley). Distance education gives the opportunity for anyone to receive an education.

         It is another way to receive training. “It will be used, not only for education  and training, but as a way to integrate learning with performance on the job in implementing aid programs” (Moore and Kearsley). From this week, I learned that almost every distance learning course is either done through asynchronous or a blended learning environment with a face-face meeting time. Almost all courses have videos for students to watch, study guides for them to read and certain required texts. I thought it was interesting in The Netherlands “there is no cohort of students following a prescribed study pattern, as in most distance-teaching universities. Students can enroll at any time and generally decide for themselves when to take an examination” (Moore and Kearsley. I don’t agree with this type of distance education. I have had this same distance education course and it’s very easy to put the class on the back burner and forget about it. Also, I think there needs to be deadlines for when students apply and start a course. They need to be able to collaborate with other peers and not just join whenever, it’s need to be organized.

         In Turkey, “most programs students are assessed by means of multiple choice tests produced by the Assessment Department” (Moore and Kearsley). I think in a course, there can be some multiple choice assessments, but not for everything. There needs to be a variety of assessments completed.

         Distance education is the solution to one of the biggest problems in our world. It will “bridge the gap in knowledge and knowledge creation between  wealthy countries and poorer countries” Moore and Kearsley). It will give every student a chance to receive an education. “Public institutions in the United States are much more likely to offer online courses than private institutions: 97 percent of two-year institutions and 89 percent of four-year institutions offer distance education programs” (Hanover). Whether students are studying abroad or in their home. Since 1970 there have been “more than 50 open universities” (Walsh) available to students. Africa has the most difficult time. There’s hardly any students that go to school or get an education. “The oldest open

university in the world, believes that open and distance learning may be the only viable and affordable means of providing post-secondary education in Africa, given the constraints there” (Walsh). I think distance education is the key to success in our world.

         Distance education can be completed online, through any mobile device students have access to. Distance learning can occur anywhere in the world. “Student mobility has increased significantly over the past two decades. Four million students studied abroad in 2004, a three-fold increase over the number in 1980” (Walsh). Here are 5 things to consider when designing a distance learning course (Chaney and Eddy)

 1. Distance learning is not superior to or inferior to traditional face-to-face instruction.

2. Successful distance learning programs are driven by teaching and learning rather than technology

3.  Principles of marketing management apply to distance learning program success.

4.  Successful online/distance learning courses and programs meet the needs of multiple constituents (students, faculty, departments, professions, administrators, etc.).

5.  A culture of support at all levels of the institution enables success

As I was doing my own research on global distance education I came across an interesting tip. “Developers and institutions should not view distance learning, simply as an easy way to make money, but rather, as a systematic, educational, delivery mechanism to reach time-bound and location-bound students”. (Chaney and Eddy) The reason for distance education is to give everyone in the world an opportunity for knowledge and an education. I think what lessons we can take from is design a course that is easily accessible to your students. Make the assignments were students are using technology they know how to use and can access materials anytime of the day. Students who take distance-learning courses are in many different time zones. Materials for the class need to be available at all times.

         I was pretty impressed and surprised at how many distance-learning courses are available in different countries. I can only imagine the number of participants increasing each year and education being easily accessible to students.

Resources

Moore, M.G., and Kearsley, G. (2011).  Distance Education:  A Systems View of Online Learning, 3^rd Edition.  Belmont: Cengage Learning.

Chaney, E., Eddy, J., & Chaney, D. (2010, January 1). The Context of Distance Learning Programs in Higher Education: Five Enabling Assumptions. Retrieved March 11, 2015, from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/winter134/chaney134.html

Hanover. (2011, February 1). Trends in Global Distance Learning. Retrieved March 11, 2015, from http://www.hanoverresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Trends-in-Global-Distance-Learning-Membership.pdf

Walsh, P. (2009, January 1). GLOBAL TRENDS IN HIGHER EDUCATION, ADULT AND DISTANCE LEARNING. Retrieved March 11, 2015, from http://www.icde.org/filestore/Resources/Reports/FINALICDEENVIRNOMENTALSCAN05.02.pdf