Group items tagged

This is my portfolio post for week 5

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_17396167?nclick_check=1 - This is an OpEd piece by David Brooks of the New York Times, which came out this week. "It could be that the nature of technlogical changes is (causing) a shift in values". This is not an opinion about education, but goes to the point about preparing students for the future/present even that assumes technology. Maybe our values are and how we assess things has to evolve, as well.

I truly thought that blog was thought provoking! I absolutely agree about changing values. But, I think that change must come from this generation and what they want for themselves, for their community and for their country. Hopefully they can think that broadly about themselves and the world. I believe they can and do!

This posting on a new page in my Blog is to satisfy the Portfolio 8 activity. I noticed this as a possibility in the spreadsheet of portfolio ideas our class has been creating. I'm in the process of converting my "plain blog" to a professional looking one that will serve as my ePortfolio for the time-being.

Wow! What an impressive CV... It's good to know that science teaching is still alive and well.

This is the portfolio of an instructor I follow online. He's asking people for feedback and constructive criticism. I asked if I could paste the link here for you all. Feel free to leave him feedback and ideas at http://michaelkaechele.wordpress.com/contact/

This is a Google Reader bundle of the portfolios I've seen so far. (Bruce, are you going to use your blog site? I need to grab an RSS feed to add you.)

Jennifer, Sorry I'm running late on this, but I do have a link for your Google Reader list at: http://web2chronicle.wordpress.com/ This should bring up my most current post. Thanks... : )

I loved your site and the things you wrote. I can see your expertise. I write;but I have a totally different style. I want to take your course; but first I want to know if I will be able to take a story, see the one I wrote in my blog, and make it a video. I think story telling is a valuable teaching aid. I taught 3-12 graders religion in moral and ethic classes at a local catholic school, after hours for some 15 years. The textbook manual and other references pretty much laid everything out...including teaching aids. Today, technology has transformed what I have learned in the pass.

This is a jing.video of a 10 Best Practice Assessment for the on-line tutoring class I am teaching. I decided on this portfolio activity because: 1. I wanted experience with jing. Jennifer indicated she uses it all the time for screen capture and I agree with her - an awesome tool! (I felt like I was "on-stage" making a jing-case, knowing everything I was saying and doing on the screen was being recorded.) 2. I wanted to understand Best Practices better by applying them to a good yardstick. 3. I wanted to share my experience as an on-line teacher. As a note, I found jing, easy to install and use, although there were a few "operator" issues - like finding the sun/icon on my desktop. I did not do the tutorials they offered, but it was easy to figure everything out. Also, after you save the jing, to have others be able to view it, you need to save it on screencast. (I downloaded it my computer and then uploaded it to screencast.)

Looked at your Jing presentation...very interesting how the tutoring works. Also, shows great use of the tool. Learning how to use the tools available to make the course material engaging for online classes takes time and patience. Thanks for showing how this tool can be used. I intend to download and begin to learn how to use.

I reviewed your Jing presentation and got a clearer idea of how you interact with students to problem solve math problems in real time on your class white board along with ongoing chat sessions. Thanks for a peek into your online classroom!

This post is found in my blog under the title noted above. It is my Portfolio10 activity. As a side note, thank you ALL for your " presence" to me as fellow students. We had a wonderful journey together, I learned from all of you, and am now looking forward to our next class together!

I just wanted to get this link up before we moved too far away from our Module 3 "presence" section. I'll be updating this very soon.

Whitney's got a nice site. That's just a wordpress theme. You could easily set up a site like that. I use wordpress on all my self-hosted sites. http://injenuity.com/ http://www.jentropy.com/ http://www.snohostories.com/ It's very easy to set up and maintain, and there are a ton of free themes.

I agree with Jennifer that Whitney does have an impressive site and I appreciate her input (link) about how to create one. I need to get on that myself in my "spare time" as my online presence or portfolio is pretty much limited to a very primitive blog. This is all new stuff for me, yet very exciting as I move forward with what I hope will become a new career.

I can't wait to see what you come up with for this. Actually, I wish we had time for all of us to create a full course. There are such interesting topics coming up!

I liked the term "research team" - says it all about collaboration!

Mary Ann, You really have a lot of great visual material to pull from to create your science safari of the Galapagos. Have you thought about incorporating any satellite and other ground level images of these islands from Google Earth?

I started this over the summer while taking the first course for this certificate. Please feel free to follow my postings on blogger as we continue in this course.

My end of class reflection is located on my blog.

Thought I had posted this...to keep my blog in order, I post dated this to 2/28/11.

Authentic learning is a solid pedagogy approach, no matter the environment. However, two concepts of authentic learning that I feel can be particularly expanded on with the internet and etools are "hooks" and "experts". "Hooks" is what picques and keeps the student's interest and motivation in the activity. With the use of video, games, tools, etc., there are many more ways to do this. "Experts" is being able to bring in subject resources, which on the internet, makes accessibility easy. For my course framework activity, therefore, I expanded on the colon treatment options module. For a hook, I searched YouTube for "colon cancer comedy" videos. There were quite a few actually. I added as a introduction to the module one of these videos - two singing colon surgeons - on colon surgery. For experts, I added references to the National Institute of Health and American Cancer Society on treatment options and survival statistics. I also am having the students connect directly to true cancer experts - patients, caregivers, and survivors. This puts a "face" on the disease, as well as an experience to what it means to have colon cancer. The course framework activity: (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HZKsjzymKk1Bn2gXDt1LOp5gqEsUvOqXE4m-72b8WYw/edit?hl=en#) In my online work experience as a math tutor, hooks are particularly important, as these students would not be in the program if they weren't already performing at a lower math level. Math is not a subject they enjoy. The automated lessons they take, often have "game" quizzes they take and can get immediate feedback on their answers. As an instructor, I try to utilize their life experiences. For example, I might ask them how old they are and then tell them how old I am. I then use these facts to construct subtraction and/or division questions.

A blog summarizing updates to my course framework on how the course would be assessed.

For the past year or so, I've been meaning to join up with a group exploring the use of multiparticipant virtual worlds for education. This activity gave me the chance to check out one of the best resource sites for this topic - RezEd at .http://rezedhub.ning.com/ . More information regarding my experience is posted on my blog. If you watch my RezEd presentation, please remember to turn on your computer audio - otherwise it won't make much sense... :-)

Module 9 and Portfolio #9 assignment - Spent about 7 hrs. on Saturday creating a slide collage with VUVOX - "This dynamic media creation suite enables everyone to easily turn their photos, videos, text and audio clips into interactive stories." I wanted to have experience with several tech applications before I do my presentation. As usual, I got very engrossed in the creative aspects and spent too much time. However, this project involved many steps - making "snapshots" of some video I took of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Then, converting these to a JPG file. Discovered PICASA for storing my pixs, but since it didn't have audio capacity, searched and found VUVOX. I had great fun (and hrs.) creating my collage, writing a short narrative, then uploading my recorded voice. I'm still not happy with the speed of the slides in relation to the voiceover, but it's close to completion. Not sure what I'm going to do for a presentation but I wanted to have first-hand experience with tools other than VOICETHREAD.

It was audio and visual poem. I will definitely think about using this tool.

This is a great presentation. Using these different tools to put this together. I can see the potential this might have in the classroom.

This is a simple Survey Monkey feedback form I created for my Galapagos Course Framework. It is designed to be inserted into Module 1 of the Course as one way of meeting Boettcher's BP 6--Ask for informal feedback early in the course. This is also my Portfolio9 activity.

I like your informal feedback early in the course! I am also thinking of making survey for the students if they have any trouble while taking the course. Your work helped me to think about my informal feedback survey! :)

Thanks for using a new survey tool and sharing it with the class. I haven't used survey monkey in a while, but it's probably the survey tool I see used most often at work.

I already posted same thing before, but the teacher said the link doesn't work for her. So I post it again. Sorry for the trouble.

A few days ago, I went to an excellent workshop sponsored by the Center for Career Connections at Bellevue College about using LinkedIn. This Web 2.0 networking application has now become the most important online tool for presenting your professional profile and work experience to the public. One of the speakers, Web tools guru Miles Austin, said that if you don't have a developed presence online, you don't exist as far as potential employers are concerned. According to a recent survey, 78% of all job recruiters use LinkedIn as their primary application for finding new employees. The link above provides some useful background information about LinkedIn, based on the workshop. It also reinforced in my mind the importance of developing strong network contacts and carefully building an online persona. If you have an account on LinkedIn or create a new one - please add me to your network!

This was interesting, as I personally thought it was too inclusive - anyone can post and your network was too broad to be meaningful. But obviously this type of "advetisement" does make a difference in employment.

LinkedIn is very different from other social networks. I'm extremely careful about my connections there. I only connect with people I know in person, people I've collaborated with online for a while, or people who already have a good reputation. I don't even connect with all my family members there, only the ones with careers related to mine.

In today's Seattle Times, A3 section - interesting article which followed over 2,000 US students from 2005 to 2009. 45% made no significant improvements in their critical thinking, reasoning or writing skills during first 2 years of study. After completing 4 years, 36 % showed no significant gains in "higher order" thinking skills. Article also states some contributing factors, many students work part-time, however, most students only spent 1/5 time on their studies and 51% on socializing & extra-curricular. I have a strong hunch the internet is a big contributor to the socializing factor. When I read such statistics, it makes me ponder if on-line learning can truly change this social/educational trend. I am enjoying many readings on the diigo, both from Jennifer and others, however, I'm not sure I would design an on-line class which designated a considerable amt. of time to short readings and discussions. Your thoughts on this?

I too found the article interesting - thanks! I do wonder about the types of classes students completed especially in their first two years. The might be a marked difference in skills acquisition if students were completing many required large class survey classes to meet initial requirements vs. small, more focused classes in their areas of interest.

I am still trying to get the picture of "slogging" through studies! Is that what I am doing when reading all this material in Diigo? I don't think so.

Nice! I'm teaching a wiki workshop at Skagit Valley College today. May I share this?

There will be! My post on my blog listed above has an article about how to do this. You might want to click on it and read the blog.

Great job, Joy! I enJOYed the videos and loved the layout of your wiki. Your eSkills really are apparent!