Online Classes

Online classes are becoming more popular everyday. Colleges are using them to help students that normally could not go to school get their higher education. In taking an online class I found ti to be quite an experience and fun to do. In an online college class your classmates can be anywhere in the world and still be in the same class and that is a very unique experience and makes the world a much smaller place.

Colleges are not the only place online education is happening, but it is becoming a valuable part of high schools as well. In Texas students are required to take 4 years of English, 4 years of Math, 4 years of Science, and 4 years of Social Studies along with a fine art credit, and 3 semesters of physical education which can include athletics or marching band. Because of the new 4x4 as it is called and only 7 periods a day students have found it difficult to get any electives worked into their schedule. To help students some schools have started offering some of their classes online. One high school is offering PE online. It just goes to show that anything can be taken online.

In my district MOODLE is an online application that has been used by a few teachers with their classes to get their credit. MOODLE has been used in this district or at least presented in this district for about 4 years. It has been used by a 5th grade teacher to help students learn about working online, to learn responsibility, and proper etiquette online. The students enjoyed the many different things they could do online like chatting and posting to each other. They were very engaged in the learning. The problem was computer use time because the teacher had to use the lab and could only use it for 3 days in a row. She did stress to the students they could access the lesson at home and work from their. It took some instruction and encouragement but they did learn they could work anywhere. The link below is one of a teacher's website with the MOODLE link that he uses now in his nursing class. He uses this link to give test, help with vocabulary, reference instruction. He has been using this program for the past 3 years but he has not made it officially just an online class. He still has the students in the classroom he just has them access the MOODLE page for information and test. It is basically what he uses to teaches his class.

http://web.mac.com/meddude/HHS_HSTE/Online_Courses.html

I do feel like students could take even my class which is art online. I have discussed it with my principal but he has not taken the hint and let me start it. I envision it being where students can access the class and watch a demo of the instruction and then once they have made their project they can upload it to the website and I can grade it from their. I have found MOODLE to be very easy to use and after taking this class plan to pursue teaching art online. In so doing it would help high school students open up one slot on their schedule to take another elective.

Blog Post 6

In the my courses I have been learning about how to integrate technology more efficiently into my lessons. NESTS are standards set up nationally to show if used technology can help students. My goals have been to incorporate technology more effectively and more often than I have in the past. I am finding new ways to incorporate and I am trying to make things like research more fun with virtual tours. I have used virtual tours of museums to help students see other artwork as it would be displayed in a museum or art gallery. I have also used virtual tours to take my students on a field trip into a cave and see cave paintings. I want the students to learn that there is more to computers than just plain research.

New goals I am not sure about except to find ways to enhance learning for all students and incorporate Universal Design for Learning and help all students learn. I want to find ways that can make it possible for special needs students all the way to above average students learn the same materials on their levels. Computers do help make it possible to level the information for all students.

The Final Game Plan

The end of the course has come and I have been working on a GAME plan to help my students use technology to help them progress through an assignment. I have found when using the tool called GAME plan it helps me to plan my lessons with more completeness. I have found this to be a very useful tool to have. Using the GAME plan I have become more efficient with my lesson in making them reach all students. I can see where I need to change them to incorporate the use of technology so that all students are challenged on their separate levels. The GAME plan is a great tool for teachers and one I am glad I have learned. It has made planning my lessons easier and I have made very few changes during the lesson because I was able to see where the lesson was headed and with monitoring I could tell what needed to be changed sooner than before.

I have started using the GAME plan when starting a new lesson and feel better equipped to handle the little things that come up. I am finding ways to incorporate technology with the GAME plan and feel more prepared to help the students. There have been many new challenges that have come up in this particular class and using wiki pages to help communicate with each other is always a fun task. There are many new and challenging things to use with my students and I am excited about sharing them.

The Game Plan Revisited

I am going to change a little bit the way I plan to reach my goal. On our CreativeBees wiki page I have posted a lesson plan on solving a problem for a community that needs something built. They may need a bridge, a tunnel, a dome, a skyscraper, or a dam and the students have to decide which they want to build and then learn about all the different kinds there are and which one would be the best to build. To use this toward my goal in my GAME plan of collaborating with others I am going to have the students contact an architect and do an interview with them about what ever they are planning on building. The students could get advice and ideas on how to build and why the choice is good or bad. 

I do feel it is good for students to talk to people in the outside world that work in the field they are studying and they can get first had advice from them on the pros and cons of the job. Architecture is a great field and one that is also a part of creating. 

The Game Plan

Technology is making the possibilities of meeting and working with students from anywhere possible. I am working with the Technology director at our school on finding a Distance Learning lesson that I can do with my classes. I usually use one class to see how it will work. I did the Distance Learning a couple of times last year and it was an interesting experience. We do not have any set up yet but our Technology staff has been overloaded with some technical issues and have not had a chance to look for new lessons coming forward.

The lessons last year were more a teacher that taught to my class and this year I would really like to have a class that can meet with us. I think it would be a great experience for the students on both sides. I have begun using Twitter and a couple of art blogs that I am a part of to find teachers that would be interested. I have started talking to a couple of teachers in the same time zone I am in to collaborate on a lesson and see if we can share the students ideas with each other. Our plan is to group our two classes and have the students collaborate with each other.  I am excited about this because the technology being used is an interesting experiment in working outside the boundaries of a classroom.

Game Plan Beginning

In my quest to find art classes to share with I have joined several different art communities and have started talking to several different art teachers about lessons and if they would be willing to join classes and visit online to see how the students would interact and if they would find this engaging at all for the students. I have not received any positive responses yet but have some that might think about it. I guess that is positive.

The Game Plan/Trudy Driskell

During this 8 weeks I am taking two Walden courses and both require a blog post I am trying to keep them straight by putting the instructors name in the title and hopefully this will help the instructors know which one is for them.

In our last post for Dr. Driskell we had to talk about our GAME plan and areas that we needed to work on. This week we are to talk about resources we might need and or people we might need to talk to that will help us reach our Goals of the GAME plan. We are also to talk about what steps we have taken to ACHIEVE the GOALS.

When I look at the first part of my last blog the one thing I would really like to do is have an art class with another art class from somewhere else. I would like to have students be able to talk to other students and see what they are doing, to see a different culture even of people. We have so many cultures here in the US that we could do that with someone in this very country that would be a great experience for the students. I have at risk students that have not had the opportunity to see much outside their little world except for going to Mexico to visit family. What I need to do this would be finding teachers from other places willing to take the plunge and set up a date and time that we could connect. Time constraints would have to be taken into account as well. Also we would have to look into software like Skype or something that allows video conferencing. We do have a lab in our building that has technology set up where we could possibly do video conferencing because they do set up Distance Learning classes for all grade levels. They just have not ever set up with a class from somewhere else. I would need to visit with the technology specialist that takes care of this to see if it would be better in there with the bigger screen etc.

As far as taking steps to do this I have not yet done that. Starting a new school year and taking two classes time has not been something I have extra of. I am starting to get the time frame and a schedule set where I can begin looking at trying new things and learning about the students and what they need in their learning.