Final Reflection

Final Reflection 
Some things that I have learned about effective teaching strategies is that you must use more than one tool. It is necessary to give many different options for learning, weather it be by video, demonstration, pictures or just reading, it is all necessary to teach. Technology is a way to reach farther into the learning aspect for our students. We live in a digital world and must learn to incorporate these new ideas into today's lessons. Things like UDLs will help make sure we are including these technologies to the best effectiveness. Integrating web-based technologies like StAIRS, Wikis, blogs, Prezis & so much more add to the 2 dimensional teachings of the past to make them more exciting and approachable for the teachings of today. I have met my own personal goals for learning about technology integration by widening my knowledge of the online world. I have learned many things that I will be able to incorporate into my current employment. I have many strategies that I will be able to relay to our instructors so that they may teach a more effective class. My new goals are basically to keep learning about technologies that help the online teaching community. My plans for reaching this goal are to continue on in the CEP courses. I am starting CEP812 next week and hoping to complete the certificate. My long term goal is to continue on to the Masters program so that I will be an excellent resource for our online instructors as well as our on-campus instructors.

Online Experience

I am not currently a teacher but work with instructors on a daily basis. I help with Bay Mills Community College's online courses. At BMCC we use Moodle as our online teaching environment. Moodle is an excellent tool for our students. It allows them to be able to communicate with other classmates as well as their instructor over a long distance. Moodle has discussion forums, quizzes, surveys, glossaries and much more. There are many other online experiences that our instructors can and do use to teach our students as a companion to Moodle, such as educational blogs, wikis, online research, & interactive discussions between students. We have all kinds of classes on Moodle, such as math, English, sociology, science and geography. Moodle allows all kinds of content to be taught because their is such a wide variety of tools that can be used in Moodle. Technologies that I think would difficult to use for our students would be technologies that they have never had any experience with or technologies that cost money.

StAIR - Google Docs to Moodle

Below is my StAIR project that I created. It is on how to use Google Docs to upload your syllabi and then upload those syllabi into Moodle.

StAIR Design Google Docs

Here is my StAIR on Merlot: http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=755379&newcontribution=1

Wiki's Lab

For this lab I was required to go to my schools/workplace wikipedia page and add something or correct something. I was surprised to even find a wikipedia page for Bay Mills Community College because the college is so small, but there it was. I read through it and it all looked pretty good. Somethings that I changed were that is says Bay Mills Community College is on the shore of St. Mary's River. It is technically on the shore of Lake Superior, so I made that correction. I also added under programs that are offered at Bay Mills Community College, that the ECE course is completely online. Below you will see a screen shot of the wikipedia page now.

Wikipedia Change for Bay Mills Community College by Kendra Voris

Also check out my wiki that I created in Wikispaces: http://cep811kvoris.wikispaces.com/

UDL Checklist Guide for Lesson Plan on Learning the Presidents

Below you will find my UDL Checklist Guide for my Lesson Plan on Learning the Presidents that I posted in an early post. I noted many features that I have that will help with multiple ways of accessing the students learning ability as well as their willingness to learn. I did come across a few barriers that will make it harder for some students who may have disabilities or just have a hard time learning this way. I will try to improve on this, but in the meantime please check out my UDL Checklist below.

UDL Checklist Guide for Lesson Plan

Evaluating WebQuest "Digital Tecnhnology that Enhances the Classroom

I evaluated the WebQuest “Digital Technology that Enhances the Classroom” because it is on a subject matter that I would like to do my own WebQuest on. It talks about needing to incorporate technology into the classroom to keep up with today’s students way of learning. The intended audience for this WebQuest is teachers. It gives them the task of researching different technologies that would be useful in the classroom for both teachers and students. Its educational goals are to educate the teacher so that they can better reach their students and teach this generation’s students more effectively. 

The pedagogical strategies that are employed are stating the objective at the beginning, providing examples and resources so they can research and by providing more information on selected links. I believe they are using deductive strategies in the WebQuest because they are generally stating that technology will help the classroom and then giving a wide range of options to research. Scaffolding is used because they are providing the resources, presenting a compelling task and providing guidance. 

The WebQuest itself is a web page but other than that, it does not take advantage of much technology. It does include links, navigation and images. This WebQuest could be done just as well by photocopying and handing out if they listed out the hyperlinks. There is not a lot of content that is only web based. 

Technically it works great. The links are unbroken and the pages link to one another smoothly. The material is up to date. They credit themselves but the links are all listed under the “process” so we are aware of where the information is coming from.

I would improve the WebQuest by adding embedded videos, a better structure setup and a different color scheme. Overall the content is great.  

Exploring on MERLOT. 
One resource I found was Prezi  

Below is my evaluation of this resource.  
Quality of Content:  
Does the software present valid (correct) concepts, models, and skills?
The software is a building block for your own content so I would say yes.  

Does the software present educationally significant concepts, models, and skills for the discipline? Again the software allows you to present your material so it can be educationally significant.  

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching-Learning Tool:  
What stage(s) in the learning process/cycle could the materials be used?
Explanation & Demonstration  

What is(are) the learning objective(s)? 
The learning objectives are that instructors have a resource where they can make a presentation or information display for students anytime and anywhere. It should be easy and effective in teaching the material. 

What should students be able to do after successfully learning with the materials?
After learning how to use Prezi, instructors would be able to make a Prezi for presenting. Since they are online teachers it would be something they can make ahead of time and students can view when they are ready. It can be very visually appealing and will hopefully keep their interest.  

What are the characteristics of the target learner(s)
The characteristics of instructors would be busy, hard-working people who are looking for simple ways of presenting material to make it memorable and accessible.

Does the interactive/media-rich presentation of material improve faculty and students' abilities to teach and learn the materials? 
It will hopefully be more memorable for students as well as easy to use for instructors. 

Can the use of the software be readily integrated into current curriculum and pedagogy within the discipline?
Yes

Can the software be used in a variety of ways to achieve teaching and learning goals?
Prezi is according to the MERLOT resource "being able to zoom in to any area in any sequence as needed. It is storytelling."

Are the teaching-learning goals easy to identify?
yes

Can good learning assignments for using the software application be written easily?
Yes, basically the students would just need instructions on what the assignment is, then they would be able to use their own creativity to make the Prezi. 

Ease of Use:
Are the labels, buttons, menus, text, and general layout of the computer interface consistent and visually distinct? 
Yes

Does the user get trapped in the material? 
They could depending on how the material is presented

Can the user get lost easily in the material? 
They could depending on how the material is presented

Does the module provide feedback about the system status and the user's responses? 
No

Does the module provide appropriate flexibility in its use?
Yes, lots of flexibility

Does the learning material require a lot of documentation, technical support, and/or instruction for most students to successfully use the software? 
No, It may take some practice by doing though. 


Does the material present information in ways that are familiar for students? 
Yes


Does the material present information in ways that would be attractive to students? 
Very!