Moodle Evaluation

Between Yola, Dreamweaver, and the Moodle site, I prefer the Moodle site the most. I think Dreamweaver is a great tool, but Moodle's ease of use is what puts it over the top. Most of the courses I teach require me to hand out many worksheets with answer keys. I could save a lot of paper if students could just access the Moodle and get the resources they need whenever they want. The Moodle is also nice for students who miss class due to illness or field trips. They can access the tutorials posted for any given lesson and try to catch themselves until our class meets again.
As far as which multimedia works best, I have used Jing, GoogleDocs, YouTube, and FreeOnlineSurveys and had no difficulty attaching them to my website. There were a few instances where the embed code gave me some difficulty but that could have been user error and not the Moodle site. I definitely plan on continuing the use of my Moodle site and creating more for my other courses.

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy

I remember first learning Bloom's Taxonomy when studying for my master's degree some 7 years ago, and the most important thing I took from it was asking myself after finishing a lesson plan: "Have I done everything I can to facilitate the learning process" The Digital Taxonomy is doing the same thing, just upgraded to fit th classroom setting we all occupy today which is dominated by technology.
My Moodle site is designed for my AP Statistics students to faciliate them in studying for the AP exam we take in May. Our curriculum is usually wrapped up by early April, so using my time wisely in reviewing for the test is just as important as teaching the original material. I need to make sure my website facilitates students in studying those concepts that are most critical in order to help them feel as confident as possible going into the exam.
The digital resources that I am trying to use followng the taxonomoy are as follows:
#1 Remembering: I have given students access to the AP central database where they can look at past exams. I am consdering finding a way to do online flashcards to review concepts as well.
#2 Understanding: I have included a forum on my page to encourage questions and get students involved in discussing key concepts with one-another.
#3 Applying: I am currently looking for an online stat review game that the kids could utilized on the site. I have heard that there are some good ones out there however they cost money to subscribe to. I'll have to work on that.
#4 Analysis: I have included several tutorials for students to review all the calculator operations they need to know for the exam.
#5: Evaluating: I have included an online quiz for students to check their understanding in a multiple choice format.
#6 Creating: Next year I think I am going to have students create their own review videos or powerpoints and then I can post them on the site so students can take a little more ownership in the development and implementation of the site.

Stealing like an aritist

The first thing that jumped out at me in this article was the statement, "There’s an economic theory out there that if you take the incomes of your five closest friends and average them, the resulting number will be pretty close to your own income". This is speaking for everyone, but my best guess is for many people, at least 2 or 3 of their closest friends probably come from their job simply because they spend so much of their life at their job. I agree with the concept of you are what you surround yourself with, but I didn't think that "economic theory" was that much of a breakthrough idea.


I definitely agreed with his thoughts on reading. In order to be a true thinker in society and have opinions on a range of topics, it is important to read as much as possible. I like his idea of finding those people we love reading and find out what they read and work our way up the "reading family tree".


Without being cliche, the thing I found most useful was one of his parting pieces of advice, "be nice". In the end what are we here for? To make friends not enemies. I know we don't live in a utopia, but such a simple phrase has such a powerful undertone.

Faculty Perspectives Using Moodle

I have had little experience with Blackboard, but the experience I did have did not leave a great impression.   I remember it being difficult to use and not student friendly. After only using Moodle for a few months now,  I not only feel comfortable using it as a student, but it is so easy to create a site and disseminate information as a teacher, that this program will be in many high schools and colleges in the coming years.

A friend of mine who went through this CCSU program was over my shoulder watching me update my Moodle site and was blown away at the ease in which I could navigate the site, add supplemental materials, and customize my settings to fit how I wanted my site to be used.

My first question would have been for Connie. It seems as though she chose to go with the Moodle site because of the inspiration she received from a workshop she attended before she set-up the course. She also said the Blackboard workshops were poorly done. I wonder had she been exposed to a better first impression of Blackboard, would she consider using it. It sounded as if she is only using online tools in order for her students to participate in forums and ask questions after-class, and it seems both Moodle and Blackboard can offer that type of interface.

My second question would ask Connie why she preferred the interface to Moodle much more than that of Blackboard. I agree with her assessment of the interface of Moodle, but it didn't seem like she gave the Blackboard interface much of a chance to fairly rate it higher than Moodle's.

My last question would be whether they both see themselves using Moodle a lot more in the future. Are there deficiencies that they would like to see fixed within Moodle that could eventually have them move to another operating system.

Post your response to the article and list three questions you would ask any of the teachers about their experiences. No repeat questions so if someone else asked it then find another.

E-Learning

In my opinion most people learn from e-courses through knowledge construction. This metaphor  described in the article articulates exactly what the designer of any e-course show aim for: engaging in the active cognitive processing during learning. Even in the classroom, I strive for my students to learn this way, so I wouldn't want it to be any different when they are learning in a distance learning setting.

It is my belief anyways that concepts will stay with students longer when they are actively engaging in the cognitive process and not just being "passive recipients of information". When developing our Moodle courses, we should all keep in mind that the goal of it is too not just flood our site with information that students can read. They can do that at the local library. We also need to make sure there are learning activities embedded within our site that foster higher-level thinking and assess whether student learning is taking place or not. If we fail to do this, then we fall into the trap of using the newest "technological fad" with very little academic merit.

Creativity

I believe that most educators would agree that fostering creativity in a student is one of the primary goals when structuring a curriculum. The problem is creativity is a skill that many students either have or don't. I compare it to athletes who perform well during the most pressure-packed moments of a game. This isn't a skill a coach can really teach, either the athlete has that "it" factor or they don't. The same goes for creativity. Once a student reaches the high school level, it becomes more difficult to teach a student how to be creative if they just aren't.  I would imagine that at the elementary level, there are activities given to try and foster a student's creative side. In my subject area (mathematics) it can be hard to see creativity on a regular basis. There is rarely more then 1 or 2 ways to solve a problem so either you follow the strategy laid out by the teacher or find yourself lost. However, there are moments when we discuss certain topics where a student will find a way to solve something using a strategy I wouldn't have taught because it would be too diffiicult for the entire class to grasp. The class I find the most creativity shown is Geometry becasue students have a variety of ways to solve problems using different theorems and shapes in different scenarios. Again though, I only find a handful of students thinking at this higher level. So this begs the question, do those students who don't come up with those alternate strategies not have as creative a mind as the others, or do they just stick to the fundamentals as shown in class? Does that make them less creative?

Inappropriate Sites

Since the World Wide Web reaches every corner of the planet, we must make sure that the content we put on our websites is appropriate for all those viewing it. This is especially true as teachers since we encounter many different students from different cultural backgrounds.
There are many examples of websites with content that is considered inappropriate for our culture. For one, any website that encourages students to cheat by purchasing research papers, book reports, lab reports, etc. online is inappropriate because it it facilitating behavior looked down on by society.
Another website I just recently heard about on the radio (I don't know the domain name) encourages spouses to cheat on their significant others. The website provides false documentation, alibis, and other tools to aide people in duping their husbands or wives.
The last type of website that is inappropriate for the culture we live in is any website that allows offshore gambling. This is a big enough problem for adults to deal with, and now with gambling available to all ages through the internet, the problem has now trickled down into the high schools, and even into the middle and elementary schools.

Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning

One of the first things that surprised me was when the study discussed how, "policy-makers reasoned that if online instruction is no worse than traditional instruction, then online education initiatives could be justified on the basis of cost efficiency." This was surprising because we are starting to see a small fragment of this thinking already at the high-school level. Not so much in the replacing of classroom teaching for self-paced online courses, but smaller steps such as finding textbooks online for students instead of purchasing hundreds of copies per year that need to be rebound again and again. Again, this is nowhere near replacing classroom teachers but it is a small step in integrating online tools as a reliable and necessary resource for future students success in certain courses.

The second thing I found surprising was in the literature review of the evidence found. They discovered that there was no experimental studies that compared the learning effectiveness of online and face-to-face instruction for K-12 students from 1996 through 2006. I took an online learning course way back in 2004 and I'm sure they were being offered many years before I took one. I also know that this debate between which learning method is better has been going on for sometime now. The fact that a study wasn't conducted prior to 2006 baffles me. I see more pointless studies done by college students on the radio and TV everyday, but none thought this was a worthwhile study?

The third thing I found surprising was in the study that found online learning to be superior to classroom-based instruction in terms of declarative knowledge, however they were equivalent in terms of procedural learning. Declarative knowledge is really just the ability to regurgitate facts. No one needs a computer to do that, you can do the same with your library card, so I'm not so impressed with those findings. I believe they were found to be equivalent in terms of procedural learning (and in the long-run classroom-based is probably better for this anyway) because it is difficult to learn the details of completing a math problem, or finishing an experiment in science when the learner doesn't have their teacher there face-to-face.

Lastly, the one thing I disagree with is that online learning models using asynchronous communication tools are valuable. In my classroom, I have high expectations for my students and I expect them to reach their potential throughout the year. I measure their growth with different assessment tools and so forth. However, online courses that employ asynchronous communication don't hold students to a high standard. Instead it simply encourages them to do the bare minimum possible to receive a grade for their efforts. The idea of having the student learn at their own convenience is a novel one, however students will have difficulty pushing themselves when its much easier to provide the minimum effort possible. I can't see the value in an education model that doesn't inspire students to have a pursuit of knowledge beyond the course requirements.

NetSmartz

I think I would use this website more with my own children as they get older than with my high school students. Don't get me wrong, there are many valuable lessons in this website that my student could learn from, but many of them seem more suitable to be taught in a health class than a math class. We have a "student professional day" this year at our high school, and many of the lessons provided by this website would make for great seminars that students could attend.

Journal of Online Learning and Teaching Comments

This study examined the differences between online courses and fact-to-face instruction. Personally, I prefer face-to-face instruction because I prefer the interaction amongst class members while in the same classroom and not in a discussion room.
Since I'm a math teacher and I teach Statistics at my high school, the things I found most surprising were in the validity of the statistical tools used to measure their conclusion that online instruction was better than face-to face. The study found that students generally have a postitive attitude toward online learning, that it may also increase learning time, and thus have a positive impact on their overall learning outcomes. However at the end of the article, we learn that particpants were surveyed one year after completing the online prep program. How much can a student accurately recall after a year passes to make a sound decision as to which teaching method they prefer?

Another aspect I found surprising was how researchers boasted how online programs are designed to closely integrate coursework and fieldwork. While this may be true, I went through a face-to-face program that also closely integrated coursework and fieldwork, and I found it to be academically sound and helpful.

Lastly, at the end of the article, it states that the specific features of the online program versus the campus-based program could not be determined. They also didn't conduct statistical analyses to explore the significance of their findings, and without such their findings are suspect.

I don't doubt that some aspects of online learning may be better than campus-based programs, but this articles finding aren't statistically sound and they make a lot of generalizations without sound proof.