This week was all about finishing up the final project....at least the first draft.  I finished mid-week and am just taking the rest of the week to take in my peer's comments and make changes.  Since I finished on Tuesday, I have made a lot of changes.  These were mostly small changes, but I also added 1 or 2 things that I had missed on the grading rubric.  I have, at this point, seen a few other's final and they are all very well put together.  I must admit that I have gotten a few new ideas from everyone.

I have experienced this project from start to finish and see the benefit of taking these steps.  Taking the assignments one-by-one, it made it so much easier for me to get to the final goal.  I believe I can also remember the steps easier than if it were given to me in larger chunks.

I created my final in my eportfolio that I have used for all of my classes in this certification program.  I just felt that the best place to keep it was within the same site that all of my other work was created in.  I thought about using a wiki or Weebly, and maybe I will still learn, but for this assignment, the Google Sites page was the most obvious for me.

This week!

I definately spent way too much time on the final project and not enough on this week's readings/assignments. I have my content completed but I tend to be one who adds and revises until the very last minute. I was about to do my final project in a new web designer program but decided that there just wasn't time to learn it AND complete the assignment. The program that I want to learn, however, is Wix.com (free web page designer tool). I tired but figured out quickly that it was going to take some time to develop the skills needed to do it right so, it's back to my old Google Sites page for me!

My Experiences with Constructivism

I used the constructivist approach when I designed this course and that was probably not by chance. After reading this weeks materials, I thought back to my experience with my Master's program. I would estimate that 95% of my courses were baseed around real world situations. These courses were based on the student's prior experience, which is how it is defined in our article titled, E-Learning and Constructivism: From Theory to Application. My courses ranged from conservation education to Institution Record Keeping. Each of these courses had assignemnts and projects that were supposed to be a product that would help us in our own institutions. As I remember back, they really focused on these type of assignements and now I have a better understanding of why they did this. It made for a much better learning experience for me. I also have been able to use some of the projects in my institutions, such as a docent wiki and an excel spreadsheet for docent record keeping.

I am grateful that my experiences have included many courses that were developed with constructivism in mind. It will definitively help me become a better conservation educator and/or online instructor.

Pre-course Survey

Here is my link to the pre-course survey for my Crane Genetic Management course I would like to teach online. This survey was designed for me to learn about the students' experiences with genetic management and the tools used to do so. I also asked in the survey, why the students' want to be in the course:what will they take away with the knowledge they gain. This is a question that can really help an instructor to better know the students' intentions. An instructor could also use this type of a survey to tweek the course a bit to meet the needs of the participants.

I used SurveyMonkey, the free version, to create this survey. Because of the free version status, I was only given 10 questions but had an introduction and exit page option.

Assessment Taxonomy Table

The course I will be using for this assignment and the final assignment is one that I would very much like to teach online. It is a course for zoo professionals to better understand the genetic management methods for captive animals. The four learning objectives I have chosen for the final are:

• After listing at least 6 components of a studbook, decide how a studbook keeper can use the SPARKS data to make breeding and transfer recommendations.
• Given 3 informative web page links, students will conclude how 2-3 conservation issues affect their species and write a 3-4 sentence explanation for each.
• By using the crane husbandry manual, students will create a range map (PDF version) for their particular species.
• Given access to the wiki web site address, each student will organize their species' wiki page within the class wiki by creating a minimum of 10 links and uploading a minimum of 4 documents (studbook and Master Plan will be required).

Using these objectives, and others for the different modules, I developed with this Assessment Taxonomy Table. For each of the different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, I added an activity and the verbs that would describe what is taking place when the students do each of the activities.

10 Things I've Learned About Teaching Online

This article written by Michelle Everson, titled 10 Things I've Learned About Teaching Online was very informative and educational. Most of the "10 things" she wrote about I had already discussed in past classes within this certificate program, however, they are great things to remember throughout the course of a teaching career. Here is the list of the 10 things she has learned about online teaching:

1. Teaching online is a lot of work.

2. Students appreciate regular communication and timely feedback on their progress.

3. Many great tools exist but aren't always necessary.

4. Assignments and activities take more time online.

5. Students need extrinsic motivation.

6. Give deadlines.

7. Online courses are not right for all students.

8. Ask students what works and what doesn't.

9. Share ideas, collaborate, and commiserate about the online teaching experience.

10. Teaching online can inform what you do in the classroom if you have opportunities to teach both online and classroom-based courses.

Of that list, I feel very strongly about #6 - Give deadlines, and #9 - Share ideas, collaborate, and commiserate about the online teaching experience.

I believe that an online course without deadlines is a sure way to set your students up for failure. Maybe many in the course would not need this type of "hand holding" but some do. Procrastination in a course without deadlines could become an issue that some students could not bring themselves back from. Given a few deadlines each week helps the student to stay with the rest of the students which helps in many ways. One is to keep them current with discussions. Another way is that it helps them to stay current with the assignments. This can be important should they have questions. They can ask other students about the assignments or readings without having those student have to work backwards.

The next item I believe is crucial is the thought about sharing with peers. Collaborating with others is a great way to better understand what works and what doesn't. Everyone has different experiences which means everyone has different suggestions and ideas. This, I believe, is true whatever profession you might be in. Collaboration, in my mind, is the best professional development, one can partake in.

Another good article comes from the International Journal of Instructional Technology & Distance Learning. This article is very well titled: Tips and Tricks for Teaching Online: How to Teach Like a Pro! The authors discuss everything from how to treat students to information about the syllabus.

The Jigsaw Method

This week our group (Team Cookie Monster) completed our mid-term assignment. Our assignment is described earlier in the blog under the Module 3 writing. We each submitted our 1-page report to the team leader and she added the information to our Weebly site. The whole process went pretty smoothly, however, it certainly would have been easier to begin the whole process in person or through a live group chat. The asynchronous communication on the discussion board made for some delay which led to some minor confusion. Our team leader really took her role seriously and she helped to keep our group going in a beneficial direction.

For more information on using this method in your classrooms, check out The Jigsaw Classroom

The other groups have agreed to let everyone post the link to their work. You can see the work by: Team Sprocket, Team Gonzo, Team Kermit, and Team Grover. All of the groups did an excellent job....take a look!

Module 4 - Authentic Assessment

“A good education makes knowledge, skill, and ideas useful. Assessment should determine whether you can use your learning, not merely whether you learned stuff.”

This is a quote from an article written by Grant Wiggins, titled Healthier Testing Made Easy: The Idea of Authentic Assessment. It seems to sum up everything there is to understand about authentic assessment. The reading this week discuss the benefits of these assessments and the negatives of the common testing that many schools still require. Instead of using a few multiple-choice tests each year to analyze what the students have “learned” over the course of the school year, many teachers are using authentic assessments throughout the year. This tends to be a better way to evaluate what the students know and it allows them to show it. They can do this by completing individual or group projects, writing in blogs or wikis, and even by performing or debating.

For an example of how this is working in some schools, one needs to evaluate the work being done in 30+ schools involved in the New York Performance Standards Consortium. According to the article, Assessment for Understanding by Roberta Furger, These schools have adopted “rigorous performance assessments” over the typical testing requirements of other New York schools. All of the assessments are based on standards and use rubrics to “grade” the students. Students in these schools have a much higher college acceptance rate than the regular students in those schools that just use regular testing

(91% compared to 62%, respectively).

In my own experience, I have always enjoyed learning about something that I find beneficial. It has always been easier to take the time to learn about a subject that applies to my career and consists of information that I see useful in my day-to-day experiences. I have a belief that most students probably feel the same way. I feel learning in a way that relate to students’ everyday lives can be so very engaging. Once a student can see why they are learning a subject, it makes it easier to learn it.

Week 3 - The Perfect e-Storm

I feel as though all of the four storms, listed in report A Perfect E-Storm by Dr. Curtis Bonk, have a lot to do with student engagement. Selecting the right technology to use for an online course can definitely make or break the course. One must be sure to not only select the appropriate technology for the specific course they are designing/teaching, but they must also select the one that will be the most engaging. When technologies are always changing and improving , I feel it makes it easier and yet more difficult, at the same time. The benefit of having many option is that htere is sure to be something out there for an instructor to use for any selected course. The downside, however, is that they are always changing and new (maybe better) options are also always available. An instructor who is one to care about the engagement of their students must be prepared and educated enough to know that there may always be a better option. A designer or instructor should never be satisified with the same old technologoes they have used for years, even if it does work. One must be on top of the newer technologoes in order to engage the newer learners and to also keep less technologically advanced students up-to-date with the new technologies.

One example I have with an advancing technology problem is from many years ago (as technology is concerned is was long ago). Back in 2004, I created a project at the Henry Vilas Zoo, where I worked as a zoo keeper. I wanted the visitor to be able to get some current information about the zoo and the animals, as the graphics were very old and worn down. In 2004, the PDA was a tool that maost people know about and used. You can read a little about the project on page 2 of this newsletter. By the time I got all of the PDAs purchased and the website, that would run on the PDAs created, the automatic updating docking stations up and running, we decided to cancel the project because the PDA was so "old school" by then and we were in the age of the iTouch. It made a big different because the iTouch would allow the visitor to download a zoo app. right from their own computer. Things changed so drastically in just a year that we really had no choice but to stop the project and re-evaluate everything we had spent so much time doing. However, this was very beneficial to do as then we didn't continue with a project that would have not been as engaging to visitors as the newer technology would have been. What we did wasn't bad...just frustrating and costly. Anyone want to buy a PDA????

Week 3- The Perfect e-storm.

This weeks objectives, as listed in our course material, are:

• Integrate learning objectives with authentic online assessment
• Diagram and map course plans and assessment preferences through the use of mind mapping software
• Coordinate and engage in virtual teamwork
• Evaluate use of the jigsaw method as a form of online assessment
• Define further assessment terms.

We have gotten into our groups this week and had some dialogue (ours is the Cookie Monster Group). Our first group project involves each of us taking an assessment tool, and creating a one page report about that tool. The report will include an introduction of the tool, uses, benefits, weaknesses, challenges, examples of use in education and one learning objective connected to the tool. We will be creating our midterm project using the jigsaw method. This means that we all add in a page of work that then gets edited to create one document. I have chosen to report on Blogger, which is a reflection assessment tool.

Another project we had this week was to take a class were are currently teaching (or one we would like to teach someday) and create a concept map from three modules' learning objectives. I used bubbl.us to create my map. The course I used is a course I recently created. I have never taught this course but would very much like to someday. It is a course dealing with captive crane genetic management.

By using this concept mapping tool, I was better able to see how each module and objective connects with each other. None of my modules stood completely on its' own. I can see how I would use some objectives to complete others.

Week 2 - All about blogs and wikis

This week's objectives, as listed in our course material, are as follows:

• Distinguish between measurement, assessment and evaluation
• Evaluate use of blogs in an online writing course
• Practice and demonstrate use of educational blogs as a collaborative, reflective assessment technique
• Formulate plans for a student-centered learning environment
• Design learning objectives that are connected to authentic assessment techniques

I was pleased to learn that this week we were going to focus on blogging tools used in education. I have been somewhat of a blogger for a few years now and I see this tool as a valuable one for educators of all subjects. In this course, we will be using the blog as a reflective assessment tool. Weekly, we will add our thoughts about the course and also post assignments. I still look back at my past e-portfolios from classes years ago. It is nice to have all of the work, that I spent so much time producing, easily accessible.

I think one of the most important thing to take fromthe readings is that so many different groups of people are using blogs. Families use them to keep relatives updated on events and family activities, businesses use them, organizations use them for advocacy projects, people use them for social bookmarking (mine for crane articles - have slacked a bit lately), and students use them to show off their work (mine for a course some time ago). They are being used for so many different reasons and by so many different people because they can be quite easy to use. There is no HTML code to learn and it is as simple as WYSIWYG - What you see is what you get! A lot of information can be accessed byindividuals who subscribe to a blog. Those users do not even have to revisit the blog to get updates; they can simply have the updates e-mailed to their inbox. I see blogs being used in education also for many different reasons. A classroom could create one to share inforamton with parents or among the students. They could post information and have others comment on what was posted. It is kind of like a running discussion on a topic.

A good book that discusses uses for blogs (and other web 2.0 tools) is: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, by Will Richardson

Assessment: Teacher-Centered or Learner-Centered?

This short "quiz" helped us to better understand where we fall in the range of teacher-centered or Learner-centered beliefs. Although there was one that I did not select on the previous page, I do believe that the emphasis should be placed on generating better questions and learning from errors. It was a mistake for me not to have selected that particular option.

My thoughts about the results of this quiz are shown in the photo below.

If you would like to take this assessment to determine where you stand,

please visit this site on WISC-ONLINE.

Week one: Why is assessment important?

As listed under the Introduction module of our course website, these were the objectives for the week:

1. Define, compare and contrast standardized and alternative assessment techniques
2. Illustrate the role of formative and summative assessment in an online course and program
3. Interpret and practice the use of a wiki as an online assessment tool
4. Practice and demonstrate use of a discussion as an informal assessment technique.

The introduction question of the week was titled, "Let's go to the Movies." we were asked to discuss our favorite movie and tell why it was so special to us. This is the post from my discussion forum.

Ok, so it's a far cry from "Gone with the Wind" or "Miracle on 34th Street" but I have to say it is an all time favorite of mine. I can remember back to when I was 8 or 9 and watching that movie everytime it was on TV. I loved Olivia Newton-John from the first time I saw the movie. I guess she was my musical role model at that young age. I collected all of her records (funny to say that now) and still have them, to this day. I don't listen to her music and don't ever watch the movie anymore but I still remember the feeling of being young and carefree, watching Grease and dancing to "Let's Get Physical" with my friends. Too bad I had to grow up (-:

This brings back old memories!!

An assignment, which I enjoyed very much, was to add to our class wiki. The wiki was created using (PBWorks.com) by our professor and we wee asked to add information about online netiquette. It started off slow but then all students did a good job of adding to the list and adding links top other netiquette pages.

To better understand wikis, please visit this YouTube video from CommonCraft: "Wikis in Plain English"