CEP 811: Online Experience

As I explored the resources and technologies I could see that many of them would be applicable to my future students and it made me look forward to trying them next year!  I think that most any class could adapt some of the online experience to their curriculum.

I am especially interested in Educational Blogs where students would have "a personal online journal that is frequently updates and intended for public consumption."

• Learning can happen anywhere a student has computer access
• Everyone can partipate even students who normally don't contribute to class discussions
• Students can build on learning by revisiting their beginning blogs and adding new understanding to them.
• Students would gain writing experience
• Encourages collaboration in the classroom
• Can involve people outside the school
• Students can use images to express themselves
• It can reduce the costs of printing and other supplies (journals, notebooks)

I would probably use a variety of pedagogical strategies with my students starting with direct instruction where I would show the students step-by-step how to use the blog.  Next I would use structured questions to get students used to blogging their thoughts, opinions and become familiar with the technology.  I would also model blogging by including students in my own blog and by responding to their blogs.  As we became more familiar with blogging I would have students become more reflective, have dialogues with other students and then invite responses from others outside the classroom.

I think some of the technologies that would be harder for my students to use are the RSS Feeds because many of them are poor readers and finding articles that would work for them would be challenging.  Podcasts and Videocasts would also be difficult because we do not have the equipment for audo or visual recordings.  Most of the other online experiences would work for us if we started out small and worked our way to their full capabilities.  Although my current students don't have a lot of computer experience I think they would enjoy learning about and interacting with these tools.

CEP 811 Wikis Lab

Wikipedia:  I first of all searched for my school, Holt Central High and we are not listed on wikipedia.  I considered adding a page but since Central is being closed down in June it seemed like a waste of time.  Therefore I went to the Holt High School page and noticed that the school's Color Guard and Winter Guard teams were not included on the site (my daughter has been on the team for a couple of years!).  Therefore, I added those two extracurricular activities. 

Wikispaces:  I had created a wikispace for CEP 810 but hadn't done much with it since signing up for the space.   My wiki is at ppilant.wikispaces.com.  I added an image, a map of the town were I live, my Google Calendar, my Delicious bookmarks (last 10), a table containing the 5 classes I'm taking.  I also added a second page (with nothing on it except a link back to the home page). 

CEP 810 Learning Styles

In my own learning experiences I find that I combine all of the types of learning.  Primarily I am a visual learner.  I like to read, see diagrams/pictures and take notes to look at later.  Secondly, I think I am a kinesthetic learner in that once I read/see I would like to try it!  This helps me really know the material and retain the "important" parts.  I know that I can memorize things by the "feel" of them--like my pin number!  If I can't remember it in my head I can remember the finger movements! Thirdly I find that auditory learning works in some situations.  For example if I want to remember where I parked the car I will say it out loud and I won't forget it!

So, the most effective method of learning for me is to read it/see it, try it and then review it out loud!  The least effective is just for me to hear it or to try it without reading or seeing it first. 

We can't teach each lesson focusing on ever learning style for a lot of reasons.  First of all, most lessons are in the written form.  Second, there isn't time to do every lesson 3 different ways.  Thirdly, we don't know how each student learns.  I believe that since most learners are a mix of all three learning styles we need to focus on teaching students how to learn no matter how the material is presented!  They need to find out what works for them.  I know at my school we often talk to students about this and give them ideas of how they can take a lesson and use different types of strategies to adapt the lesson to their personal learning style so they can learn and retain the material.

CEP 810 Using CC Licensed Works

This is an image I might incorporate into my Health class as we were studying the affects of smoking.  I think its a powerful image.

Photo Attribution:

Original image: "antismoking10"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7330030@N03/3674110607
by: xkorakidis

Released under an Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en

 This is a picture I took of my dog running on the beach.  I think it shows the pure joy of summer!

Photo Attribution:

Original image: "Pure Joy at the Beach"
http://s146.photobucket.com/albums/r262/ppilant/?action=view&current=lilyrunning.jpg
by:Pam Pilant

Released under an Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

This is what Creative Commons says the CC looks like:


Pure Joy at the Beach by Pam Pilant is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at i146.photobucket.com.

CEP 811 UDL Guidelines

After completing the UDL lab I was suddenly overwhelmed by the scope of making my lesson plan "fit" the requirements!  I have always thought I tried to present lessons in a multi-dimensional approach but this really brought out more depth to what could/should be done.  The only thing I worry about now is that there is not enough time left (in my career let alone the school year) to add all these components to my teaching!  With some of the items I struggled with defining what they were asking for, wondering if they applied to a "short" lesson and then getting off track trying to decide how I could add those features.  I noticed that the checklist  sent by Chuck was not exactly the same as the one on the website (UDL Guidelines - Educator Checklist) but used the version he sent.