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I have been teaching my subject for twelve years now, but do I know how to demonstrate competence in content knowledge using technology?

At my school, North Polk, we are currently discussing how we teachers must be constantly adjusting the strategies we use to teach so that we are better able to meet the needs of all learners. It is not enough to know our curriculum; we must be able to deliver it successfully too.

This is so true! Quality teaching will have the most impact on student achievement - not resources, class sizes or the use of technology.

I appreciate the 2nd half of this statement most--understands HOW to teach the content to students. We must be developing 21st century skills through all content learning and that doesn't happen by using 19th century teaching methods. Cooperative learning and deep thinking needs to occur.

This is important because technology is not "one size fits all" and you want the technology to help the learner not distract the learner.

Yes, I agree, we must select the right tool for the right job. The tool needs to be selected after the objective of the lesson has been decided, then the tool is selected to "enhance the learning". We also need to remember that instruction on how to use the tool should be taught before it is expected to help with content learning. It is too easy to forget the content and focus on "tool proficiency."

If you don't give students appropriate and timely feedback, how will they know what to do? This is important in a face-to-face class and probably more important with online classes when you don't see the teacher each day.

I am weak in this area, but last summer experienced a total lack of communication in one of my online courses that really left me frustrated. I resolved to make sure my students never had to experience the same thing at that point.

I think this is so important especially for those who are not sure if they are doing an assignment correctly.

You are so right -- it's easy to get frustrated when there is a lack of communication.  

This has been something I have had to do deliberately because it is too easy for me to keep the same sort of activities happening all the time. I took another OLLIE course that taught me various ways of doing this. It was helpful because I was having difficulty visualizing what I could do on my own.

I have had this experience as an online student and have included it as an online instructor. In both cases, people who collaborated worked face to face, even though there was an online option. I think as a student you really have to push for inclusion in the collaboration. It is somehow less satisfying than being physically present.

This needs to be a standards, but there seems to be a lot to know about how one would follow it. Sometimes I think people, myself included, may not even know they are doing things unethical. I appreciate that we are learning about this throughout the Ollie classes.

This would seem easy, but I have found it to be tempting to skim over it, doing the bare minimum. It is amazing how much content I want to borrow from other sources, which is fine, but also how much I leave the attribution to the bitter end.

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I developed great respect for teaching standards over the past few years as I was required to learn all about Iowa's Early Learning Standards in my position as an Early Childhood Consultant for Northwest AEA. I observed that teachers who get to know and implement the standards have better outcomes for children. Having the credentials and meeting the standards for whatever you are teaching, on or off-line, brings credibility to what you are doing.

I'm new to online teaching.  What are your thoughts in rigor?  Do you find online classes more or less rigorous than traditional class?  

First, if we have students go to a link or a tool that is no longer accessible for some reason, that could be a bit of a problem and would hold the class up. Also, staying up-to-date on new technologies and skills provides many more opportunities to incorporate tools into a course to make the delivery of the content of the course as accessible and appropriate as possible

I think this would be an area that would be easy to find yourself getting into trouble with. We need to give credit where credit is due, and gain permission from owners of sites, materials, etc. before using them. With so much information out there, we want to make sure we have quality information, without trampling on the rights of those who created the material.

Learning styles is an interesting concept to be included in teaching standards. Recently I have been studying the research for another class. I have always trained PD considering learning styles and consider myself a "visual" learning, I also have taught Gardner's theory to teachers, however there is little empirical research to support this concept. In fact in our years of Every Child Reads work, they had this listed as a myth to reading strategies! If you want to consider this as a myth, here is a link you might be interested in; www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIv9rz2NTUk

Link not working. Search Youtube for learning styles a myth and you will find it.

Maybe rather than referring to the visual, auditory or kinesthetic needs of a learner, they are referring to whether a student learns better by reading material and "digesting" it on their own vs. collaborating with others over the material read; showing they have an understanding of the material by video taping a lesson in their classroom vs. writing a learning log of the lesson: lesson description, what went well, what they would change, what didn't work, etc. Just a thought!

Our OLLIE courses will be important in helping me to be able to meet this standard. I need to explore the instructional strategies and techniques that are appropriate for online education and find the ones that will best meet the needs of students in my courses.

It is always important to align resources and learning materials with learning goals and choose the things that will enhance learning. I find that it is easy to get caught up in all the cool web 2.0 tools out there and I need to remind myself to focus on the things that will help students meet their learning goals.

I believe it is so important for a teacher to constantly evaluate the data being collected in their "classroom" - whether it's an assignment or journaling, etc - to evaluate if the instructional strategies that they are using to teach the course are actually helping the students to learn or causing more confusion! It is only by analyzing the data collected from the students in various forms that a teacher can truly know if their methods are helping the students learn and if they are not, by changing those strategies or methods so that the information is more accessible/understandable to the student. Teaching is only truly effective if the students are also learning!

This is something important to think about. Yes, including certain requirements are important on a rubric, but I think it is also important to include some things that are more subjective (like how does the content answer the question asked/problem given) rather than a student's ability to use the commas with zero errors.

I agree. This is where writing a quality rubric is important. It needs to be clear and specific while also pushing the student to "think".

This definition will be my baseline for the remainder of the article. Anybody have a different definition

Side bar here, I never really know what this means, I hear it bandied about by administrators and Curriculum Directors but have never really had it explained. Feel free to enlighten me

Hi Dan, in general it means providing support so that a student can eventually take their work to the next level, in the same way that a scaffold allows painters to work above street level.

We actually are going to discuss scaffolding in a week or so in the class. It gets to the idea that you are putting a structure around a student to help them learn. Then when they are confident, you take that away and see if they can do it solely on their own. Kinda like practice questions in math, with the answers in the back of the book, before you take the final quiz.

Thank you Sally, that helped me also

Rubric = student thinking/assessment Tests = student knowledge/grades ??

Can't hit the target if you don't know what your are aiming at. I think a rubric has to show what you want out of student performance, the rubric is a road map

I'd say much of learning is not "hit or miss". There are a lot of shades of gray when it comes to learning (I think students can half-learn quite a bit of stuff).

Is formulaic always a bad thing. If the rubric allows the student to respond adequately, even if formulaic, is it a bad thing? I don't think you have to use a rubric for everything but when used, it should provide a clear path for the students.

Formulaic isn't always bad. But I'd say that a rubric is overkill in this case. If you simply want a clear-path formula for students, you should use a checklist. Rubrics provide many shades of variance on performance that is confusing if you want that formula.

I think this is how I would incorporate rubrics, they would be used with other forms of assessment and not be the sole basis of assessment. I just wanted to respond to comments in article that suggest rubrics lead to "wooden" responses. If all you use is a rubric, then students will adapt and write in that fashion. Mix it up a little and allow students to keep their creativity

It is getting very deep or very scientific here. I am not qualified to be in the business of creating a rubric to assess a rubric I have created. I would like to know how to consistently make a good rubric for any task/project/thing I am assessing

Instead of creating a rubric to assess your rubric (ahhh!), I think it's best to use your rubric to "practice assess" student work and see how well it works for you and the assignment.

I think we need to create a rubric to assess the rubric we used to assess the rubric:)