I was very excited to start a Stritch class again. I completed my Masters in Instructional Technology in August of 2009 and had fantastic experiences throughout the entire Stritch program. When I heard that my school district, Menomonee Falls, was thinking about introducing online class offerings, I looked to Stritch first to get the appropriate training. CEdO501 and 502 will allow me to earn the required 30 hours of professional development necessary to teach online classes, per Wisconsin DPI.
As an electives teacher (Business Education), I must always make myself as valuable as possible to my district and being able to teach online will help with that. In addition, 501 and 502 will allow to become a more proficient Financial Life Skills and Computer Applications teacher. I have already introduced blogging to my students through our new SchoolFusion website and communication tool. However, after seeing my students' enthusiasm and engagement with SchoolFusion, I would like to incorporate more of this online learning into my 7th and 8th grade classes.
As a primary example, we are pushing hard at North Middle School to incorporate cyberbullying prevention lessons into our curriculum. Using online learning tools would only allow us educators to better meet our students (almost all are digital natives) in the online world in which they live. I hope to bring resources from this course to use in that endeavor.
After spending our hour on Elluminate on Thursday, I left with the impression that online learning has greatly advanced in just the few years since I was taking my grad classes. I was amazed at how easy Elluminate worked in the areas of Louis communicating to us via audio, video, and text, as well as how we could readily communicate with each other via instant messaging, emoticons, and the green checks and red x's. My head was left spinning, wondering how I could incorporate an online classroom/virtual office such as this into my future conventional and online middle or high school courses.
Hello Jim,
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to see another school that uses SchoolFusion. We just changed our site (saintcats.org) over to them this year and some of our teachers are really getting a kick out of the blogging tools too. I find the biggest advantage to be how they are automatically moderated by the company instead of the teachers. Our old system was ignored because the teachers would have to approve each message and discussion never really advanced.
Have you seen the Pause Before you Post stuff for Jostens about cyberbulling and using blogs and forums. http://www.jostens.com/students/students_cp_pause_before_you_post.html
They came for our yearbook meetings and gave us a bunch of posters that really help people think about what they are putting online.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that online learning has improved in the past couple years. The last online class I took through UW-Milwaukee was in Psychology, and we used the learning tool d2L (http://www.desire2learn.com/). Compared to Elluminate, d2L offered NONE of the features available now, and I can honestly say I never was able to interact with my professor in a meaningful way.
In my school district we have a Charter School called KMGlobal (http://www.kmsd.edu/KMGlobal.cfm?subpage=1213270) that is a fully online school designed for students from across the state, country, and maybe even the world. I'm glad you are interested in the online school movement, since I also think it will become more popular as budget cuts increase and our education system changes.
I will definitely have to check out School Fusion. It sounds like a pretty cool resource.
-Nate
Jim
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post. Bus. Ed. teachers need to stick together! Technology has really changed since I started teaching a Long Time ago. I think that's fun and sometimes a little stressful.
Our school has E-chalk for the school web site. It also has blogs, discussion groups, online storage fo files, teacher web pages, e-mail, and we can link our lessons to district, state, and national standards.
DC
Bus. Ed. from UW-EC; class of Long Ago
Hi Nate,
ReplyDeleteWe used D2L back in 2004 and 2005 at UW-Whitewater, when I earned my Voc. Ed. certification. It is indeed amazing how far we have come with online learning. With the way things are going with the state budget, maybe online teaching and learning is the way we will be going. Wonder how districts will work this in with their increasingly limited financial resources?
Jim
Hi Donna,
ReplyDeleteE-chalk sounds similar to SchoolFusion. How are your students and parents doing with it? We have found moderate student involvement and little parent involvement, probably because our district has offered no training to either group. That is too bad, because it is a tremendous communication tool.
Always good to hear from a fellow Bus. Ed. teacher. I am only in my 6th year of teaching (was in retail management for 20 years before that) and have found teaching to be the most meaningful profession I could possibly be in.
Jim
Thanks for the tips on cyberbullying resources, Nate. I will check them out as I seek to incorporate stronger lesson plans in this important area for my middle school students.
ReplyDeleteJim