8.1 iNACOL Standards Reflection Link.

My Reflection on the iNACOL standards for 8.1 is linked here. Would not embed, or copy and retain formatting.

6.3 Reflection: Technology and Assessment This module has explored the use of technology tools for both formative and summative assessment. As you think about how you will implement formative and summative assessments in the online and blended environments, what are some of the factors you need to consider?

Formative Assessment - In person, I use a variety of tools to check for understanding as a whole and individually by asking class questions to see responses with regards to the topic/objective/standards/content we are covering. Tools such as exit slips, one-minute essays, and web 2.0 tools like polleverywhere.com are used to gauge whether we are ready to move on or need more time on specific aspects of learning experience. In my classes that are blended, the formative assessments take the form of online journals, discussion forums, and could include the use of items like VoiceThread.

Things to consider: (1) Time. As great as online and blended learning are for allowing students time to work at their own pace, it takes a huge amount of time on the part of the teacher to stay on top of assessments -- much more than what is normal for a traditional face-to-face course. For example, if using a Voice Thread vs. say an exit slip to check for understanding, the teacher needs to be at a computer with internet access. They then need to log into the program, find the voice thread, then listen to and then grade on the fly, all of the responses. You cannot sort them or have a list printed to see what has happened. Compare that to getting the exit slips handed to you, and being able to flip through them quickly (after alphabetizing them if you are even more organized) and quickly turning through them as you mark the grades, writing comments on the back as you go. Less time, more efficient. Time is a huge consideration, not to mention the avoidance of creating grading nightmares that can arise when some of the tools forget to include the ability to sort the responses, or easily see the work of each individual student on an assignment.

(2) Resources. Having all the types of things that students' have to navigate and click on will save them time (and the teacher headaches). Some tools don't embed or play nice with other systems and some formatting options are limited. It is something to think about -- how many different places do you as a teacher expect, and want to have to navigate and troubleshoot and click on yourself, to be able to assess the student learning. If the idea is to use the formative assessments for quick adjustments to the daily lessons, the tools need to be easily accessible and easily monitored quickly.

SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENTS pose another challenge. These are easier, however, because they are the "show me" stage -- what have you really taken in and don't require as quick turnaround with regards to the daily lesson plans. For the online and blended environment, you have to take into consideration tools and equipment as well as skill levels and access. It is vital to provide ample time for students to work on the projects and for the instructor to have built in time to respond to the needs of the students fully in case they have technical issues. I, for instance, this week was dealing with an student who was taking a semester course through independent study with me and she was having trouble accessing the links for the final exam. When I looked at mu screen, I didn't see a problem, yet she kept emailing me. I directed her to the space on the site, and she still said she was having problems. It wasn't until we ran into each other by accident that we realized that I hadn't turned on access to that part of the website, so she couldn't see what I was seeing in order to be able to complete the coursework.

As tech-savvy as we like to be, I need to keep in mind that if the students are only interacting with me online or online for the blended part, that I have to give lessons on how to use the tools -- even the most tech-savvy of us all have to learn to adapt and new sites and how they operate take a little while to "feel out". In my teaching of technology, I always allowed students to "practice" with the skills and programs first, learn how they worked, figure out the steps that were needed to complete items, become familiar with how to save and the different formats that were needed so the work was transferable, practice with assignments designed to force them to encounter some of the tricky parts of the technology so that when they actually had to produce content on demand and on a time constraint, that they were able to navigate and save as was required. Practice before it really counts.

When working only with blended and online, I need to think about the use of samples so that students have an idea as to what I am asking. It's been great in this course that there are the forerunners who always have items posted so that those of us on the second string can model our assignments after those trailblazers. While most assignments are pretty specific as to what is needed, there is always a need to make sure that students understand the objectives and specifically what is needed to be seen when the assignment is turned in.

With the online and blended environments, planning is another huge element that must be considered. You have to give your students ample time to plan their study and project time and if you are going to make changes to an assignment, you have to do it well before the due date. Although there is some flexibility, if you are truly allowing a student to work ahead, you would really need to stay well ahead of the students. It's never been fun to participate in a class where the expectations and project guidelines change while you are in the middle of working on the assignment.

4.3 Reflection: Social & Professional Networks

FB or Facebook is my connection to my past and my present. I live in a small beach community and many of my friends from high school are still around. We have a very strong connection via facebook including organizing multi-year events such as all-comer track meets, alumni events around homecoming, and keeping up with activities that are going on. We share updates on family, health and the events that shape life as you grow up. For me, it's like slipping into a really comfortable pair of sweat pants after a long day -- I get to catch up on people who made me who I am today. It's my check-in on the world and my morning wake-up. Since I deal so much with technology, and recently moved to a new school site, facebook helps me to stay a bit more connected.

I use the internet to find new lesson plans, media to help reinforce concepts and academics to help my students "get" the material. I am pretty good at finding things that I need, however, there are days that I have to allow myself to just surf. The internet, and all the connectivity, can easily distract you and I can often find myself totally engrossed five or six degrees separated from what I was originally looking for. I know this about myself, so I give myself permission to just surf and veg out at least once a week while being on the internet.

I know that students also do the same, however, I think students don't necessarily know how to find the items that they are looking for effectively. I don't think students will go deeper to investigate multiple sources. They tend to just STOP when they get one or two hits and don't necessarily persist to find more than one perspective. Now that teachers have started training students about the credibility of sources, it has started to get better. Would students respond that the internet helps them with their learning? I think so. The main difference is that I use the internet to help me search and confirm or revise my thinking on a matter, whereas students may only use that they find as a quick snapshot without necessarily going into enough depth.

To help students develop a learning network online, I would introduce them to reader applications, like google reader and search/topic alerts. This is one way that students can have items of interest delivered automatically from many sources. All they would have to do is to go to the reader on a regular basis to see what has been posted by people they are interested in reading about or sources that they have found to be interesting. Also, developing tweet profiles separate from their personal sites. Getting a linked in account -- many of our students are required to create them for themselves as part of a career class. I would encourage them to find sites, blogs, etc. that feature content that they are interested in. Want to learn more about robotics? Look up a few blogs, websites and follow them on a regular basis with a news aggregator like google reader, etc. Find twitter hashtags that you again, have information that you are interested in following. Pinterest is new as well and there will always be something.

3.1 Reflection - My classroom uses many 2.0 tools, but I am always looking at ways of increasing the use of those tools to enhance student learning. My economics and business math courses both use moodle and some online evaluation tools quite extensively. Students are also required to maintain and update via various assignments a google site that serves as an electronic portfolio of sorts. I have used glogster, voicethread, poll everywhere, google apps for education (a site hosted specifically for our middle school students soon to be rolled throughout the district), moodle, gaggle.net (for email), learn2type (for keyboarding instruction and remediation), slideshare.net, etc. My classroom is always a mixture of students interacting in groups, occasionally listening to mini lectures that I will sometimes prepare with jing (a screen capture and narration program which is free) so that students can then access the presentations 24-7 after the initial presentation of materials to the students. I am always trying to improve student's access to the classroom materials without making my course just a watch a video and answer a question. I thought about the following assignment after reviewing some content with my students this past week and re-visiting Google Tours via google earth. Below is a brief description of the beginnings of the assignment. ACTIVITY: Using Google Earth's tour capability, trace the effects of creative disruption in the global marketplace. Your will be part of your presentation that should show knowledge, understanding, integration, application, analysis and evaluation of the concepts of the "invisible hand" and our core basic economics concepts as summarized in our Handy Dandy Guide (HDG): 1. People economize.

2. All choices involve cost.

3. People respond to incentives. Incentives are actions or rewards that encourage people to act. When incentives change, people's behavior changes in predictable ways.

4. Economics systems influence individual choices and incentives. How people cooperate is governed by written and unwritten rules. As rules change, incentives change and behavior changes.

5. Voluntary trade creates wealth. People can produce more in less time by concentrating on what they do best. The surplus goods or services they produce can be traded to obtain other valuable goods or services.

6. The consequences of choices lie in the future. The important costs and benefits in economic decision making are those which will appear in the future. Economics stresses making decisions about the future because it is only the future that we can influence. We cannot influence things that have happened in the past.

SPECIFICS: Your group will be randomly choose a creative disruption to research. Remember, you will be reporting based on your role as an economic adviser for the country that your group was assigned at the beginning of the semester. You will need to use a variety of reliable sources, based on what you have learned via your English classes. They cannot be from social media, blog sites, wikipedia, etc., and you will need to accurately document your sources with the appropriate citation format for the discipline of economics. You tour must include: background about the industry, a thorough explanation of the process and challenge of the industry/innovation you have selected, and the economic-based reasoning, principles, that are expressed and exemplified as a result of the industrial/innovative shift.

I have used many 2.0 tools. For my economics course, I am trying to develop ways for students to put the basic concepts of micro and macro-economics into application. My thought was to use the google earth tour process to have students work with the concept of creative destruction. This concept essentially has students think through various causes and effects of changes in the market on various stakeholders and products -- think disruptive innovation. The use of google tours via google earth would allow students to track the various industries and countries that are impacted with innovations and changes in the market.

The tour would allow students to trace the various suppliers and resources that go into every single product -- even the simple pencil to help them see how small, seemingly un-related items can lead to a large-scale change in a market. A sample of the beginnings of the assignment are shown above. Google Tours would add the connectivity element that is sometimes hard for students to grasp. Being able to physically show how so much of any product is interconnected and can be affected by even the most seemingly insignificant change (a flood in Thailand, for instance, knocked out Honda and much of the electronics industry because the area hit was where microchips were produced -- a major supplier for the world--and the area had record flooding), can bring about changes to price, supply, demand, etc.

Students would be assigned or asked to choose from a list of innovations with the assignment to trace how the improvements and innovations have impacted the economy as a whole of either the world, the country they have been assigned to work with, and the U.S. economy as well.

This assignment would emphasize allow the students to move through all aspects of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy by using the basic economics concepts of supply and demand, opportunity cost, scarcity, etc. to frame their search for connections all the while applying their knowledge by analyzing the cause and effects of various decisions (quotas, tariffs, subsidies, production, expansion and contraction policies, etc.), evaluating the long and short term effects of these decisions, while creating a google tour showing the timeline of the decisions, the locations of the impact as well. Students would be able to collaborate with each other though use of google docs - sharing a document with their plans and research; creating a bibliography by developing a form through a spreadsheet, that they could simply add as they came across good resources; present their tour by embedding it into a prezi presentation, a glogster "poster", or even creating a voice thread site for students to respond with, a google site with quizzes, videos showing background about the topic/industry/innovation, etc. The options for the use of the tools is really limitless. Students could even choose which would be best based on the audience they were focusing on and which media would best convey their message and allow for the easiest embedding of the tour.

Directions for students would need to clearly explain how many "stops" on the tour would be required, what type of analysis would be needed, the format of the final project with lots of practice on how to incorporate the narration, the notes, the pins and location markers, how to export the file and how to prepare it for presentation. Students will need to have extensive plans, scripts, storyboards, outlines to make sure that everything has been thoroughly researched as the actual preparation of the tour, when trying to be very specific can be quite tricky. Another aspect is to have a firmly established timeline, and unlike me this week, check to make sure you know the due dates. They would also need to have presentations about the various tools so that if they were indeed going to be given many options for which type of media they would be using, that they would also have time to practice with the tools to see which ones would best fit their needs. Oftentimes, students will use only what they are comfortable with even though something else may better fit their vision and better relay what information they are trying to convey.

2.2 Reflection: Methodologies of the Online Instructor (Pass / No Pass) In your reflective post this week, think about the following questions:

1. Reflecting on the information covered in this module so far, how might your instructional methodologies need to change in an online or blended learning environment?

2. What skills and strategies might you improve or expand upon in order to best support student learning in a blended or online environment?

Teaching online requires a whole new set of skills in order to be successful. Whereas the basics such as designing assessments and some form of lesson and unit planning pull from some of the skill sets necessary for traditional classroom teaching, it's just the tip of the online iceberg.

PLANNING - You have to have the whole course planned in advance. No more use of incremental teaching and planning. Online environments require you to have every assignment, every detail, every module, resource, etc. planned in advance in order to allow for student success. Whereas in a traditional classroom you may be able to adapt the pace or change your schedule to adapt to where students are in the learning process, with a blended/online class you have to be way ahead of the game. In the blended environment, you can make some of those mid-course corrections, but in the more student driven, online environment, this is not so much the case. Since you will have students working ahead at their own pace, you have to have all assignments and due dates established well in advance, taking into account your ability to get work returned before the next assignment is due so that students can also receive the necessary feedback.

This is a big area for me as I tend to adapt based on the face-to-face interactions with my students. Planning a whole year in advance, before getting to know the personality and academic skills and challenges that my students will be bringing with them to the table, not to mention the ever-changing historical landscape when dealing with economics (one of my courses), committing to a specific plan of action is really difficult for me. Traditional teaching allows for more easy mid-course corrections. For truly serving the needs of my students, having all my teaching ducks in a row all at once, is a daunting task. I like big picture and the minutia needed to truly serve the online needs of students is challenging. Having been through a few courses myself where the planning and grading were not well done, it was extremely frustrating.

INSTRUCTIONAL ITEMS - I tend to be best at coming up with items organically. An inspiration for a lesson or for delving deeper into a topic that seemed to interest the students seems to some about naturally in the course of discussions with the students. This aspect of seeing the enthusiasm (or lack thereof) and using those social cues to then adapt instruction the next day is something that I cherish. With the online requirements, I would need to front load a lot of my instruction and translate it into digestible chunks. I am also a big story teller and that is how I get points across to my students, I would need to find a way to adapt that to the online environment. I know that when I have taken courses online, that I often just head to the assignments and get them done, then go back and if I have time, or an interest, will then go back to the source material. It's one of the drawbacks, I see to the online teaching model -- that loss of interacting with the students/instructors on a more personal basis. Nothing replaces that interaction, and I know that many of the students in my face-to-face classes relish that interaction and connection, especially at my level since I teach mostly high school seniors.

GRADING - You have to make the rubrics and criteria available day one and this is an area that I have always struggled with. I do really well at creating real-world, relevant assignments, but getting the rubrics on paper so that students know exactly what I am looking for has always been a challenge. Telling someone what it's not, is always easier than articulating exactly what to look for. This part is imperative for successful online teaching and an area that I really need to work on.

TIME - With the availability of content and assignments 24-7 in the online world, pacing and time for grading and responding daily to emails for questions and student concerns is imperative. This aspect is something that I also struggle with. In my traditional classes I set aside one night a week for grading work from students for summative assessments. Formative assessments and checks for understanding are done on an as needed basis, but for the longer assignments and make up work, I have a standing rule to update on Thursday nites. If you don't have your work in by 4pm on Thursday, it may or may not make it into the gradebook until next Thursday. Somedays I may have some extra time to review items, but Thursdays are set aside for cathing everyone up.

In the 24-7 world of online learning, I would need to be able to set some commitments with regards to time and place so that I would be able to honor the needs of my students. Unlike traditional, online students often will need immediate feedback before being able to respond so if I miss a day from checking emails, etc. I could cause a cascade problem for a student who maybe had only that evening set aside to be able to complete the work. If I miss checking in, they may miss the chance to complete the assignment well. That puts a lot of pressure on the instructor. Then, how do you hold someone accountable if you are the reason they could not complete their work?

INSTRUCTIONAL MODALITIES - (1) more unit/long term planning including providing detailed rubrics and expectations, including due dates; (2) adapting my storytelling to the online world -- something that I really miss with my independent study students; (3) figuring how to somehow get the ideas of the simulations that we do to show specific key concepts translated to the online environment; and (4) organizing materials in an easy way for students to find the information. Moodle is limiting in this area, and still working on how to get it to be a bit easier for students to follow what they need to do.

WHAT I NEED - (1) that long/range planning practice -- just hate to commit to items before knowing the students. I have to learn to accept that much of online learning lacks that personal touch and personality that is unique to the face-to-face experience. Not sure that I like the stripping of that aspect of learning/teaching and worry that too many students will start to equate this "just the facts" just tell me what I need to get a grade mentality that can develop with what learning is all about. If this also becomes the norm, then the teaching profession itself may become nothing more than automated classes with no face-to-face and that would be a shame. Watching a teacher on video is not the same as being there in person. One of the downfalls of the online push.

(2) grading and rubrics. I need to work on getting the assignments thought out and planned in advance so students know exactly what to expect and being willing to slog through the online grading process. Grading online takes so much longer than traditional grading - count the clicks it takes vs. just reading and moving to the next paper- it's a commitment and does require more work on teacher side; (3) willingness to be on 24-7 for my students. This boundary is something that I will need to work on. As a student, I know that I would get frustrated if my questions were not answered immediately when I was struggling with something online. I believe setting expectations and online office hours is something that may be needed so that students understand that there have to be some limits. Right now, it's usually assumed that if you are taking an online course, that you have more access to the instructors online but thinking about it from the teacher's perspective, you still should have some boundaries. That may be the next pushback in online work, although that also some what negates the 24-7 aspect.

I love the opportunities for blended and online learning, however there are some aspects of the traditonal classroom that I hate to see lost in the translation. Nothing will ever replace a teacher interacting with students in the classroom, sharing ideas and discourse, learning from each other in the process. The side conversations and connections made really are priceless and need to be remembered and cherished. Whereas the online and blended models can help students just get through the material, that is not truly what education is all about and I hope that people take some time to remember that just because we can be more "efficient" by moving to online and blended models with regards to what some aspects of the process, we need to remember that education is more than just getting an "a" or covering the curriculum. That other aspect of the process is one that needs to be factored into the equation as well.

My highest priority for taking this course is to refresh my comfort level with teaching and interacting with students strictly online with no face-to-face interactions. Due to various health and scheduling needs, I am the becoming the “go to” person with regards to providing independent study for students for economics and potentially for students in need of other social studies related courses (once I complete my supplemental credential). As the state of California and the UC System as well start to recognize, legitimize, and eventually regulate the requirements for both providing online learning through course requirements, the writing is on the wall there will eventually be a corresponding credentialing requirement. I want to be sure that I am staying current with the rigor, the relevance, and that I am using tools that my students will be able to quickly become familiar with and/or will be encountering in their pathway through the educational system.

I have been using online learning in my classes since the earliest days of Blackboard.com starting at the middle school level to ensure that my students would be comfortable with the types of actvities and skill sets that they would need to suceed. This exposure, planting the seed, was designed to allow my students to make rookie online mistakes -- like asking questions before reading the assignments fully (like what I did on Tuesday when I couldn’t find the description for this assignment because I didn’t allow myself enough time to look around) before they “count”. I lament the loss of the technology courses at the middle school as students now will rarely encounter the requirement of submitting and keeping track of assignments independently through an online learning environment for many of them until they reach the high school and since many of our educators do not use an online learning environment like Moodle or Haiku, I fear that they will be in for a rude awakening when they head to high school. I feel that we are doing our students a disservice to not require them to participate and take at least part of some of their classes via an online learning portal just to prepare them for the rigors that they will encounter in college. Again, better to practice and learn how to format documents for posting, embed links, post on a discussion board using online etiquette, etc. now before it will really “count” so you can focus on the content rather than the process of interacting through the online portal.

Also, knowing that the state, especially with technology, likes to follow rather than lead, taking this course and being able to show some sort of certification with regards to online teaching seems the next logical step towards being able to differentiate my teaching in positive way. With more and more students needing to be placed in courses without the corresponding rise in revenues to support those students, online courses are going to become more and more the norm in order for students to be able to meet graduation requirements at the secondary level.

Some strategies that I would like to focus on include: improving interactivity - what types of new tools are used by other teachers to ensure that students are actually interacting with the site as intended, i.e. reading the articles, watching the videos, etc.

grading - online grading takes so much more time -- how do you manage this and balance screen time with life time? I love getting items sent to me electronically, but the time that it takes to grade them (all the clicks and separate comments that are needed) sometimes outweighs the old style of just having the papers and sitting anywhere to grade them. Feel that paper sometimes is more 24-7 for assessment than the online work.

use of video/tools for student portability and access - I used to love to be able to embed videos into blogger then have students respond to questions. This was my favorite substitute assignment. Now that embedding is restricted, still looking for ways to again, have students access the content in ways that are familiar to their use of social media, but with an academic focus that is not a management or grading debacle.

what tools and tips and tricks that other online teachers have come up with that I might incorporate. I have glogster, voicethread, prezi, edmoto, moodle, poll everywhere, collaborize, tapped in accounts -- just would like to know how other teachers are already using them to get the feedback from the students on a more formative level, so that I know that they are ready for the next step with the material.

About Me

My name is Bonnie Maye and I have been working with technology since the birth of Apple computers. My dad was an early adopter who was always interested in the latest advancements so my brother and I grew up with the Apple IIe's, typewriters that could save documents, the earlier video games played on the TV, and toys like Speak N Spell. When I was a student at Cal State Fullerton between 1984-1989, I was one of the first to carry the "portable" Mac around with me on a cart and my printer. I was hooked on the possibilities opened up by the Macintosh for publishing and how it would revolutionize the way companies produced print.

For the last 20 years or so, I have been working in the field of education with emphasis on how to use technology to help enhance student learning. Until this past school year, I worked at a middle school and with grades 6-8 designing the technology courses for the students. This included various permutations from six-week wheel courses on keyboarding, computer skills, video production, to trimester, semester and year long courses including journalism, yearbook, music publishing (with garage band), and computer publishing. I have also for the past five years, worked with English Language Learners, as the primary teacher and then this year as the District Coordinator for the state testing program.

Technology is just a part of the process. I have also been working with the student information system since the District adopted PowerSchool and was one of the first trainers and support personnel for the implementation and training of both administrators, support staff, and teachers on the system. I still help manage and update the system primarily in the area of registration and the updating of various components related the English Language Development program related to the new CA system of CALPADS. Working with support staff at various sites, we fix the errors in data entry and occur and help to reconcile inconsistencies in the various individual student records.

This year, I started my high school teaching career in the fields of math and social studies teaching Business Math and Economics to mostly juniors and seniors. This transition has allowed me to work with students at another stage of their educational endeavors and has presented me with new opportunities for growth. I am still learning my pacing and adjusting to the new level of students, and look forward to some additional new opportunities as we prepare to add two new courses to our catalog, Business Accounting and Business Economics in anticipation of a new pathway for students to engage in at our high school. We already have a visual/performing arts and foreign language pathway and recently added an engineering pathway, with the first cadre of students working on their capstone projects in two years. Another new pathway, the biomedical pathway, was just announced last week. I will be working on the courses in the still under construction, business pathway and have been working on the development of the two cornerstone classes and the UC A-G Approval for the courses as well.

I come to the edtech world with a B.A. in Communications with an emphasis in photography from Cal State Fullerton. I also took most courses needed for a minor in business including macro-, and micro-economics, business law, and accounting. I worked, and took all the courses towards a masters' in educational technology from CSUSD, but was not able to complete the final project, so attended Chapman University's masters in education program and graduated with an M.A. in Education focusing on Professional Learning Communities. I have taken courses for adding a multiple subject credential to my existing secondary business, and journalism, photography credentials, through National University as well as participating in a GATE certificate program and many professional development programs independent of the ones offered through my district.

This online certification is another opportunity for growth, reflection, and learning how to better meet the needs of my students while keeping myself up-to-date on the latest research, professional practices, and giving me more tools to share with my fellow educators through our informal "aha" professional development meetings (often held over coffee, or chatting during off hours) and our more formal built-in professional development meetings on Monday afternoons.