True confession: I am overwhelmed by this course and how to manage it with life. In the last two weeks, I had my daughter's fifth birthday party, another course I am taking, and Thanksgiving (like everyone else), and although there was a constant red flag in my mind that I needed to do work for this class, true to my nature, I procrastinated and put other obligations first. This is, unfortunately, quite easy to do when the course is online. This leads me to wonder how high school students would fare with an online course. I think there would have to be more meetings online between the students and the teacher than we have for this course. Also, there would have to be more deadlines in between with reminders sent to students via e-mail or some other form of communication.
Another aspect of this course that is troubling to me is that I have to figure out for myself things such as blogging, to which I am new. I am decent with technology, but when it comes to work for a class, I want to earn an A rather than just get the work done. This seems like it will be a bit more challenging due to the nature of an online course. I wonder how I would convey this to my future online students so that they understand the degree to which they must self-motivate and work. It will be vital to break the common misconception early that online courses are easy.
I am hoping to refine my time management skills through this course. Also, I want to soak up as much knowledge and skill in regards to technology as I can. I feel that this is my chance to really practice things such as blogging, google docs, and whatever else is in store for us. Without being assigned to do it, I don't know that I would have tried blogging. I think it has potential, though, for both classroom use and personal use. In the classroom, I could see assigning my students to post on a blog as a form of a book club or literature circle activity. I also envision requiring blogging as a way to kick up a notch my Honors English class; I am just not sure how yet, other than the book club idea, which could be for my Inclusion classes as well.
I did a bit of searching online to see how other teachers use blogging in the English classroom, and another idea I got was to build a creative story as a class. Sounds cool. I also found a website that has some useful tips on it for beginning teacher bloggers: http://www.inspiringteachers.com/classroom_resources/monthly_columns/new_teachers/blogging_is_beneficial.html
Hi Jaime -
ReplyDeleteSame confession here...and a little feeling of deja vu as I did take another course online and did quite a bit of online work for my master's program. I knew that this work was on my list, but somehow it got pushed back...and I didn't quite want to wait until Monday night or Tuesday during my prep! I TOTALLY agree that students would need lots of deadlines and guidelines (it might be too easy to open another tab and putz around on Facebook while "working"). Definitely challenge #1.
I was a little worried at first about trying to get both a regular and honors class in the same moodle class (as was proposed to us in the science dept. earlier this year)...I didn't want it to be just more assignments or a report on a scientist. I am starting to see (with some help from your ideas) that it could be possible.
A challenge for you (and me as well) - For those multi-level classes (not necessarily in the same hour), how could we differentiate? The wheels in my head are also wondering if we could get some cross-curricular ideas going on here...potentially either a forum or a inservice day idea?
I am right with you Jamie on finding time to get this work done while balancing other school work, family, etc. For some students, this might be difficult for them to find the time at home on their own to get their assignments done. I am sure like you said, that you would need to monitor each student’s progress and contact them a few days before an assignment is due if they have not turned something in.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I feel that online classes are targeted for students who have not done well with traditional schooling. I think some students may do better with online classes, but does some of factors that contribute to them doing poorly in traditional schooling (lack of motivation, hard to find time, etc.) also affect them when taking an online class? It would be interesting to see if there is research about this topic.
Jon Nelson:
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that high school students may have difficulty with an online course. When discussing in our homework groups I was talking about getting my Health classes into the computer lab once a week for this type of an online set-up. Also, today in the library I saw a student working on an online learning class.
I also like your comment about self-motivation and agree that it takes a lot of it to participate and succeed in an online learning course. I've known high school students to procrastinate ALL THE TIME.