Last week, after our online learning committee meeting, I was asked to develop a survey that would ask all middle and high school teachers their interest in learning more about online learning.
FROM THE SURVEY
Are you interested in learning more about online learning? Please select the level of training you would like to receive below. (select all that apply)
Level 1 – Basic informational meeting – What is it, How does it work, how will it affect my classroom?
Level 2 – Extending my face to face classroom into the online environment using Moodle.
Level 3 – Learning to develop/teach fully online classes.
Other
THE RESULTS
Out of the 80 or so teachers (MS/HS), 23 teachers indicated interest in learning more about online learning…and even possibly teaching online! I am very excited to see that our teachers are showing interest in this new method of delivering education. After all, Pawlenty’s 2013 online high school learning experience will be a requirement for our current 8th graders!
Information sessions will be coming to your buildings very soon – be on the watch for invitations.
Think of how education has been delivered for the past 130 years. Information was not readily available. If you wanted to be informed, you would have to go to a public library, pick up an encyclopedia, or be “taught” information by university scholars deemed “teachers”.
Fast-forward to today’s environment. Information is readily available and students can Google information faster than the teacher can lecture it. So is the lecture important? Do you think the traditional industrial aged teacher, who was the keeper of information, will be successful in an online environment?
The biggest change (or challenge) for online teachers is that they will transform from the “sage on the stage” (givers of information) to the “guide on the side” (mentors of information). Online learning is truly student-centered and teachers will need to help students with their questioning, problem solving, and investigation skills while individualizing and differentiating their instruction for every student.
Since online teaching will focus on the needs of the students, it will be very important to have multiple ways to assess them. When I say asses – I do not mean TEST! (traditional t/f, multiple choice tests) Too often teachers use the “test” method as the only measure and evaluation of student’s learning. Learning comes in multiple facets so we need multiple ways to obtain students personal growth. Assessments need to be viewed as a teaching tools and learning tools.
Assessments can be reflective and personal (like blogs, journaling), can be knowledge based and measured (quizzes, tests, pre/post courses surveys), and they can be collaborative (like skype and wikis). All assessments must be based on the courses objectives and final outcomes!
Teachers will also learn from these assessments. Are my course materials effective? Does content to be further enhanced or developed? Teachers need to be open-minded and accept the learning and feedback they receive from their students. It can be very empowering to the students that we are learning from them, just as they learn from us.
So, please review Pink Floyd’s video “Another Brick in the Wall”. How does it coincide with the current problems in brick and mortar classrooms? How will online learning tear down these bricks in the wall?
I have stumbled upon a VERY cool tool called Glogster! The educational potential for this site web2.0 site tremendous! It allows students and teachers to build posters on virtually any topic! YThese digital posters allow students to build and interact with videos, pictures, clipart, text, and sound.
I actually utilized it while developing the framework for a Podcasting class that I am thinking about developing online. These are the following tools I will use throughout the course.
I will tell you that I have spent oodles of time building this course and I would love to hear your feedback! Check it out by clicking my Glogster Podcasting site!
You will need to have your screensize at minimum of 1024 x 728 and you will have to scroll down to view the entire page. What do you think? I cant tell you how many times I have seen students working on the old fashioned collages by clipping newspaper or magazine pictures out. Think of how many trees will be saved by using this site AND how much funs students can have building them. They even have a Glogster education site that just recently opened!
“These Kids Syndrome”–the tendency to explain away the shortcomings and failures of our education system by saying that “these kids can’t learn”; or “these kids don’t want to learn” or “these kids are just too far behind.” And after awhile, “these kids” become somebody else’s problem. And this teacher looked at me and said, “When I hear that term it drives me nuts. They’re not ‘these kids.’ They’re our kids. All of them.” (Obama, 2008)
While I was reading chapter 5 of Wikinomics (in one class) and learning about constructivism and Blooms Taxonomy (in another class), I stumbled upon a conversation of a consortium in SE MN that is looking at developing a charter school due to declining enrollment. One of the links that was included, to make the case, was a video of a charter school in Minnesota that is totally project based. There are no schedules, there are no bells. Students are completely in charge of their learning! Their adviser (aka teacher) is a learning resource consultant and provides individual two way communication with the students vs the sage on the stage one way communication of the traditional industrial aged classroom. The schools are governed by majority of teachers vs administrators and traditional school boards.
The classroom pedagogy as you and I know it, is completely thrown out the window. The customers, the students, are also co-innovators and creators of their curriculum. They are required to develop projects based on the standards of our state. They learn about things that are meaningful to them. They are creative and engaged with their learning environment because the work they have chosen is authentic and relative to their personal goals and aspirations.
I was excited to see this topic of discussion because I was able to merge two areas of my current studies into a very relavent problem we face in our schools. Our traditional schools are losing students (and funding) to online schools, PSEO, open enrollment, home schooling, and dropouts…
Isnt it time we rethink the way we do school business and deliver education?
At what point will we no longer have a choice?
