Module 2 Reflection:
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?
The availability of online content means that I will have to spend less of my time reviewing, practicing, coming up with practice exercises or running copies; instead, I will have to focus on gathering and organizing that content and having students prove their knowledge. Vocab quizzes seem obsolete; but blogging about a themed set of words and sharing the posts/stories is a more entertaining alternative to using each word in a sentence (actually, I already have that as an option, but some students don’t want to appear ‘nerdy’). So one of the areas I need to expand upon is my own knowledge of web 2.0 possibilities, and building up a repertoire of activities that lend themselves more to online productivity. I think that’s the only uncomfortable part of all this – I’m good in the classroom, I’m good at enticing kids to pay attention to me (at least until the next text) and catching them when their attention strays; I’m good at adapting instantly when I need to because I have so many methodologies, strategies, alternate assignments, etc. in my mind and at my fingertips. Finally, I will have to develop my web-presence. I’m fun in the classroom, but online? I am such a noob.
Page 5 of our module 2 “classroom” mentioned, “At a simple level, consider the difference between knowing how to post messages on a discussion board versus understanding how to use a discussion board to create a lively educational class debate.” This is like a round-table or fishbowl discussion. It will take some experimenting for the online version of appropriate interaction, but I’m already really good at setting up discussion questions – in fact I did it in college once or twice when a professor didn’t have the question up. The weird thing is, these kinds of questions are usually more towards the end of the lesson when I’ve already asked most of the comprehension questions. I guess these will have to be asked at the beginning, and the content comprehension questions will have to be handled by the content providers? Still, when I think about lessons, I think about the long-term end goal, and then think about "what will students need to understand and do today" so that I can check understanding, give feedback, etc. I can't imagine having students turn in essays paragraph by paragraph online. And since the spell check and grammar check are already here, maybe I won't have to focus on those as much? Maybe the time I would normally spend on that instruction will change to discussions and monitoring those discussions. How I think about how instructional time is spent (and even thinking that instructional time is limited to less than an hour at a sitting) is going to have to change!
Other skills included communication skills, tech savvy, time management, and relating to students. I'll start with the last, first: So much of my ability to relate to students and make content relevant depends on non-education moments, like noticing a kid is tired, or discussing some new video briefly between classes. Online learning seems to promise to cut down time spent on disruptive classroom behavior (yay!) but what about all those little things that make people relate to people? Still, I already specialize in learning things about students through writing, so I think that, with practice, I'll be okay. Michelle R Davis, in “E-Learning Seeks a Custom Fit,” says, “Within each of those [online] courses are multiple ways to access the content, Vedoe says. Some students may click on audio and visual material provided with the text, but since doing so isn’t required, others may bypass those features. Students may feel more comfortable communicating with their teacher through a wiki, through e-mail, by instant messaging, or by telephone. All those means of getting in touch are options…” ( Technology Counts, Education Week, February 3, 2010). So again, it's a matter of learning to use what's available (and learning it well enough to teach some students and keep up with the others!) Luckily, I am pretty good at writing; but I don’t think that’s good enough since I have had many students tell me that they really don’t understand some things until it is read aloud to them. So I will have to learn more about skype and including podcasts or similar in content. It makes me a little nervous to think that the majority of content might be controlled by some vendor. Based on what I’ve experienced in several textbook adoptions, vendors are really good at selling and usually not as good at teaching. That said, even if we have awesome content, fantastic tech training, etc., there are still those students who don’t “get it” without someone walking them through it. I’ll need to expand my knowledge of tools to help those kids. The advantage is that, in online learning, I can work with one child at a time without worrying about one of my taggers adding his or her artwork to the inside cover of a text book the moment I'm otherwise occupied.
I have pretty good time management skills, communication skills, and my current position requires constant checking-in and monitoring not only students assignments, understanding, and grades, but their exact hours of attendance and equivalent work hours in their course(s). I'm not worried about the intensity of the job at this point because I'm used to "intense."
Organizing content is something that I work on a lot in the classroom. The challenge here seems to be front-loaded in terms of time and is required upfront in the course. As I said in the first reflection, I know that the organization of online content and pacing are the things that I need help with and was the impetus in taking this course. So I'm lookin' forward to Module 3.
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