{"id":36,"date":"2013-11-23T20:28:10","date_gmt":"2013-11-23T20:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrmclaughlin.com\/web\/?p=36"},"modified":"2022-11-21T21:01:58","modified_gmt":"2022-11-21T21:01:58","slug":"journey-to-online-teaching-a-possible-answer-to-why-school-11-23-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/23\/journey-to-online-teaching-a-possible-answer-to-why-school-11-23-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Journey To Online Teaching \u2013 A possible answer to Why School? 11\/23\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week in my online courses we have been discussing delivery and assessment of content and how that is different in the online environment. \u00a0In my last\u00a0JOT post<\/a>\u00a0we discussed the modes of learning online and how that affects engagement. \u00a0Engagement is an education code word for student motivation. \u00a0How do you motivate students in your online class? \u00a0In the online environment how do you encourage your students to attend and participate in your live synchronous sessions? \u00a0In my\u00a0\u201cToday\u2019s Online Teacher<\/a>\u201d class we used our live session this week to discuss this. Unfortunately I could not attend the live session and watched it recorded. In the interesting juxtaposition I was learning what it meant to be that student who was not motivated to attend the live session live. \u00a0Now saying it that way makes me sound horrible. \u00a0There is not back story. \u00a0As a teacher we need to know the whole story. \u00a0I did not attend because it was my wedding anniversary \u00a0and I spent the time with my wife. \u00a0Ah ha..That seems reasonable, but I found that watching the recorded live session was kind of like watching TV without sound. I missed out on all the interaction with the other students in the class. \u00a0So the next time I have a live session I am going to attend just for that reason. \u00a0I have my motivation. \u00a0 It is because I felt like I missed something by not being there. \u00a0I felt left out. \u00a0In our face to face experience when a student is absent they just miss all the experience. \u00a0I think by seeing the recording I got a glimpse of what I missed and that created a motivating force in me. \u00a0I believe using live session is a must for online course. \u00a0Which means it is important for all students is to attend. \u00a0So my question would be when do those get scheduled? During the school day , at night on weekends..are they mandatory or can they be recorded for later use\u2026should they be done in small groups\u2026can student do live sessions without me if there are too many small groups for me to participate in every live session? \u00a0These are questions that have to be explored and answered before I start this online course.<\/p>\n

Online teaching is so very different then face \u2013 2 \u2013 face instruction. As I weave my way through this conversation about motivation and engagement I can\u2019t help but think about two authors Dan Pink and\u00a0Will Richardson. \u00a0In Mr. Richardson\u2019s book \u2018Why School?\u2019 one of the major themes is school should assess on things that are authentic and not googleable. I agree with him, \u00a0we don\u2019t assess the \u2018good\u2019 stuff in brick and mortar school. \u00a0Part of the reason for that is the system (students, teachers, curriculum, standards and parents) is locked into the grade. \u00a0I have recently tried to work outside the box a little and found the students them selves are horrified by the idea of not getting points for something they do. \u00a0Dan Pink does a great job of laying this out in his book \u2018Drive\u2019. \u00a0I think \u2018we\u2019 are trained the we need to be scored every time we are assessed. \u00a0However, online education is something different in that we don\u2019t have to put a number to everything. \u00a0I believe in the end goal \u2026what can you make and can you justify why it is good. \u00a0I think that should be the standard of assessment and since online school is so different we might be able to break free of the mold. \u00a0I just recently gave my geometry students a quiz where they had to make a pantograph. \u00a0 \u00a0 Either it worked or it didn\u2019t and if it didn\u2019t they had to go back and fix it using math to justify that it would work. \u00a0The product was the quiz. \u00a0The goal to be mastered was proving lines were parallel. \u00a0They could not make the pantograph without proving their lines were parallel. The product would just not work correctly. \u00a0That is the kind of assessment I think we should do and an online course might allow us to do that.<\/p>\n

Web design ( the course I plan to put online) \u00a0is primarily a performance based course. Often people think of web design a \u2018code\u2019 but that is only part of the story. In fact now a days that is really a small part of the story. That being said students do have to demonstrate understanding of aspects of design such as color theory, above the fold, and layout. \u00a0These concepts are very similar to concepts you will find in any design course.<\/p>\n

To asses my students in an online course \u00a0I plane to use \u00a0journal posts for student to write about those concepts. \u00a0I will also use assignments that have the students apply the design concepts to a problem such as what would be a good color scheme for a hospital and justify your answer using color theory. \u00a0No decisions in design should ever be based solely on the reason \u201cI like the way it looks.\u201d Students will have to do a lot of writing supporting their decisions. \u00a0Since design is often a team effort I see the students also working in design teams coming up with designs together to solve a problem and justifying those. \u00a0The other mode of assessment for this would be presentation. \u00a0I foresee some graded live sessions where students will present to their classmates, defend their design, take constructive criticism and use that to make their design better. \u00a0That whole process of defending a design is formative by nature. \u00a0It is ok to have a design torn apart and you have to re do it. \u00a0That is part of being a designer. \u00a0The end product is what matters. For things like that students will receive grades for actively participating in the conversation.<\/p>\n

As I am building this course and going through this process I am fining that I am too much of a resource in my curriculum. \u00a0I am finding I need to re write my curriculum so my students find the information themselves. \u00a0I discovered this when I started to think about how I was going to put all this instruction on the internet\u2026video will not work\u2026there just is not enough time to sit down and make videos to teach they way I do in class. \u00a0So often in class we have discussions and asynchronously watching videos of me talking just won\u2019t do it. \u00a0I need to create that conversation virtually and asynchronously through journals, discussion posts, blogs, and yes even twitter.<\/p>\n

So I think that online school might just be that answer to break the mold. \u00a0Why School? might not be answered in the brick and mortar buildings. It might be answer all across the world behind screens and keyboards.<\/p>\n

PS.<\/p>\n

One question I have is when to find the time to have 25 individual conversations as opposed to having a single class voice. \u00a0The major issue ( and it is a good problem ) is that everyone will clearly be visible in the conversation and a few voices will not dominate the conversation. \u00a0Lastly the conversation will not end in 42 min.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week in my online courses we have been discussing delivery and assessment of content and how that is different in the online environment. \u00a0In my last\u00a0JOT post\u00a0we discussed the modes of learning online and how that affects engagement. \u00a0Engagement is an education code word for student motivation. \u00a0How do you motivate students in your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrmclaughlin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}