Philosophy of Online Learning

This semester, I’ve had the privilege of learning the benefits of online learning. I didn’t know much about this before the course, but through reading articles, watching videos, and engaging with other online material, I’ve been able to see how I can implement this is my own classroom some day.

I think this course was a good introduction for me, but if I were ever to teach a class completely online then I would need a lot more additional training. I think I could use many of the tools we’ve learned about to enhance student learning. I’m also grateful for the experience I’ve gained from creating a LMS, which I know I will use in the future.

I’ve especially liked all the student-centered learning that can happen online, especially with students teaching other students and being in control of their own learning, both pace-wise and content-wise. I truly think it’s the future of our education system.

“Drawing” My LMS

I really like the sort of meta-thinking involved with drawing out my LMS. I’ve already thought about the different pages I want and I’m starting to imagine the content that could be there. After reading some of the accompanying website for this week, I knew I wanted simplicity. Even though students today are more experienced with technology than any other generation before, they have NO troubleshooting skills whatsoever. I definitely want my site to be as user friendly as possible for this reason.

When I saw the list of possible drawing tools, I stopped at the first option. I LOVE everything Google this semester, and this was no exception. The Google drawing tool–which, like many of the Google options, I never knew about–is straightforward and took almost no time for me to understand the different capabilities of the site. Plus, I was easily able to save my drawing as a jpeg to add to my blog. I’m so in love.

I have a quick gist statement for my homepage, and then I’ve organized the two “types” of links into categories: Quick Links, which are more like references for students and Student Centered Content, where students are actually contributing to the material.

Quick Links-These are the links that students are *hopefully* accessing frequently. I’ve included links to our calendar, which is important because I want them to be able to look ahead, as well as an easy link for homework assignments and my contact info. I also imagine that parents could have access to these links as well. So these three links are sort of passive in that students aren’t quite contributing to the material, but they’re still important. I’m remembering back to student teaching and how much I dreaded the “what is our homework” question and “what are we doing next week?” whine. So these are also sort of selfishly placed because I hate dealing with them. Hopefully this will help create more independent students though, as well, since they can go on and check and not totally rely on me–there is still a part they have to do…

Student Centered Content-This is where students are interacting with the course and their classmates. First, is their discussion page. This is a link to a continuous Google doc we would be using throughout the semester. I also have a link to a weekly poll that allows students to provide some feedback to me about the course. I always missed giving these short, anonymous opinions in school and it’s a healthy, easy way for students to give me quick feedback. Finally, I imagine sharing so much with my students, so I want a link to a page that I can keep a running head of all the cool things I find relating to our content. I’m also hopeful that students would contribute to this too.

Super Stars-The last two features to my drawing are the stars on the right side. The first one is the inclusion of a search bar on my page, since I want student to be able to find content easily, even it it was from the beginning of the semester. I’m frustrated when websites don’t include search tools, so I knew I wanted one for my LMS. I also wanted to add a star for Google, because of course I’m using Google sites for my LMS, that way I can easily integrate all the tools Google offers users, for free and using one universal username!

Reactions to Building my LMS

This is probably the first time I’ve felt at a real disadvantage in this class. Since I’m not currently a teacher, I’ve never had to operate an LMS before. So before I even started shopping around different platforms, I wanted to look at as many samples as I could from my teacher friends. Primarily, I noticed they used the LMS to communicate with their students beyond what could be done in the traditional classroom. I know that we are limited to just a short time with our students, and there is so much content we want to share. So, instead of trying to fit everything in or ending up just completing surface level interactions, we can keep the depth while offering many resources to our students. Additionally, I noticed extras such as polls on these websites. I think this is a good idea because I always felt pressured to vote a certain way if we had some kind of democratic vote in place in the physical classroom–and my convictions were stronger than most people I knew. I also like the idea that students can give feedback on these polls they might not want to give in class. Another feature I noticed amongst most of the LMS pages was a calendar. As a tutor, I’ve worked with students on organizational habits and know that they often have no idea what is due on any given day or what is expected of them. An up to date calendar can be perfect for these students because, even if we remind them a dozen times, they might forget about that project that is due. The LMS allows them to grow responsibly by encouraging them to check a reliable source. I’v considered all these elements in the beginning stages of my own LMS.

As a result from my research, I decided to use Google Sites for my LMS. The reasoning behind this is because I love how streamlined this site can be with my teacher Google account. I can see myself adding documents, spreadsheets, and slides right from my Google account without students having to download any files or go hunting for what they’re looking for. In the past few years, I’ve become a huge fan of what Google is doing to compete with Microsoft, and now it looks like they’re competing with other big educational sites like Moodle and Edmodo. I appreciate the lack of bells and whistles that other sites are often distracted by, so it only took me a few minutes to understand how to navigate my new page.

What do I think of the LMS?

I love the idea of a streamlined class website to organize assignments and share information. I love the collaborative aspects that Sites encourages. I was able to add a class discussion page through Docs which students would be able to add to throughout the semester. I would definitely use an LMS no matter what level I’m teaching. I just think it’s an easy way to stay connected to students. Since I’ve never used one in practice, though, I’m wondering what it would be like to receive a bunch of documents online versus the old-fashioned paper way, but I always hated carrying around folders filled with student work when I did teach. I would love to look at the behind-the-scenes of a real LMS that receives student work through whatever means, since mine is more theoretical.

On the flipped classroom…

An LMS could be useful in the flipped classroom. I was surprised how easy it was to create and edit pages, so I could see myself spending an hour or two a week on managing my LMS and adding the necessary information. It would also be easy to bring up the LMS on the projector during class as well. Really, the possibilities are endless with what could be shared with students. This experience has actually rejuvenated my passion for education because I’m thinking about lessons and the specifics of my sites. I’m not sure what to do with this new rekindling, but it’s definitely happening.

Now that I’ve added extra “stuff” to my LMS, I like Google Sites even more. In embedding a video from YouTube, it was extremely easy to add a video to my site. I’m wondering if other websites are so easy, or if you have to settle for just adding the link to open in a new page.

Unit Plan Update

In choosing my unit plan, I wanted to choose something I’m passionate about as a teacher, writer, and reader: the memoir. After adding a poll to my site, I found a video that briefly explains the subgenre of the six-word memoir, which was famously created by Ernest Hemingway and has gained popularity the last few years. In addition to defining this genre for the viewer, the video provides many examples to inspire the viewer to write his or her own six-word memoir. The online social learning I can connect with this lesson is the twitter feed @sixwords which tweets out examples of this subgenre everyday to over twenty thousand followers. Part of their assignment for week one would be to write their own six-word memoir and to tweet at this handle. Who knows, maybe this account would even RT their tweets!

Learning Map for Online Learning Environment

This concept map truly helped me think about the organization and purpose of my online learning environment. Since I’ve never had a LMS before, it was difficult, at first, for me to imagine what this website might look like and how it could help learners. After reading many sample sites, I found a few commonalities between some of the best. First, the websites are often streamlined and simple. Student should be able to access the material easily without hunting through layers of pages. They also featured sidebars with frequent links. I chose to include my contact information, homework assignments, helpful links, announcements, and calendar on mine. These are the pages that I would want as a student, so I thought they were important to include on my teacher site. Additionally, I wanted a search bar so that students could search for a key term if they can’t find what they are looking for. I imagine my LMS to mimic our class website on D2L, with a content page for each week and the different assignments listed.

Additionally, I wanted to focus on the content of the site and the expectations I would have for students accessing this material. I definitely want to take advantages of the many benefits of Google for this. I’m currently in another class that is using Google Drive and I’m loving it. The instructor puts everything on the Drive–class presentations (slides), handouts, additional resources, polls, and links. I would like to include this into my LMS, which is partly why I chose to use Google Sites for my LMS over other outlets.

Learning Map

Drumroll Please…

My mindmap answers a question I’ve been asked hundreds of times over the last few years. I wanted to explore a few of the different options, plus give the necessary skills and other possible careers beneath each subnode. If i decide to pursue a career in higher education, I will work with many future English majors, and will share the many possible careers and English degree (or advanced degree, in my case) can lead to besides the obvious teaching route. I chose a monochromatic color scheme since all my ideas are related, and wanted the colors to reflect that. Additionally, I chose to use a blue scheme since it’s a calming color, and what can be more stressful than having to answer THAT question a million times?

Feedback

I think ExamTime and the mindmapping was user friendly, easy to learn and navigate, and basic. I like how there weren’t hundreds of options. I was able to make my mindmap in about an hour and a half, which is good for me since I tend to get caught up in the visuals of most presentations. I spent most of my time brainstorming the content than playing around with the nodes and moving them around. Okay, I did spend a lot of time moving the nodes around. But I’m human! This tool is extremely user friendly, but I do have a few criticisms. First, I wish there was a tutorial for the first-time I used this. There were a few prompts, but I like a quick demonstration and explanation of all the buttons. It took me a few minutes just to find the preview button.

Additionally, I had no idea that the nodes I created would be presented in the order they were created until I previewed my presentation. For a tool that is supposed to break free from linear teaching, you have to create the project linearly or the nodes will be all over the place. Lucky for me, I did this, but I’m still disappointed that you can’t manually choose the order of the nodes, an aspect of Prezi that I was really missing. I did, however, choose to add pictures to my mindmap after I created all the text nodes. However, after finally reading the FAQ section, I learned that pictures should be placed either behind or in front of the node when you create it originally, or else they won’t be shown until the end, like mine. I’m annoyed with this but I wasn’t going to redo my whole mindmap to get the pictures to match up. Looking at my mindmap as a whole, the images break up all the text, so I didn’t want to delete them either.

A Teaching Tool?

I’m torn on whether I would recommend this presentation tool to students. I would probably want to pair it with a tutorial video before unleashing them to make the same mistakes I did. Plus, I worry about students choosing pictures before their text is written. I’ve seen the time that can be wasted looking for that perfect picture before all the information is written. I’ve been guilty of that too in the past, but this time I wasn’t, and was penalized for it. I do like how the relationships between ideas and nodes is easily demonstrated with this service. Additionally, I like how users are limited to the amount of text you can write in each node and subnode.

Overall, I think I would use this in the future for my own learning though I wish there were a few advanced options available to control the order of the nodes and the presentation styles. Although the simplicity of this tool cannot be overstated, I would prefer just a few more options to personalize my presentation a little more.

Summary of Chapter One: Engaged Learning in an Online Environment

A brief history of student interaction:

• John Dewey first began talking about engaged learning/active learning/social cognition/constructivism/problem-based learning with an absolute focus on student-focused learning. His concentration was on primary/secondary schools.
• Later, these ideas were extended by Malcolm Knowles for adult learners.
• Social interactions were studied by Lev Vygotsky, who thought students learn most from others and also form a complex social view, which leads to more learning.
• Jean Piaget believed learning has to be connected to the learner for learning to take place.

hint: don’t engage students like this

This chapter emphasizes the importance of relating content to the students. Additionally, thanks to all the new media available for educators, there are a variety of additional ways for instructors to interact and collaborate with students.

Key elements for an online learning environment:

• students must establish their own learning goals
• students should work together in groups
• there must be appropriate resources and products available for students to utilize
• instructors should employ tasks that are multidisciplinary and authentic with real-world connections
• must have authentic, performance-based, and ongoing assessments

Phases of engagement: A unique aspect of this chapter is the course calendar, where the roles of both the instructor and student:

Overall, the online instructor needs to realize that the emphasis is on the student’s engagement and learning. This article gives helpful advice for educators preparing to teach in an online environment, and the message mimics the first chapter of our textbook.