Interview with Denise

I interviewed Denise Kuethe-Strudthoff. Denise and her husband live right outside of Stoddard, WI, which is just south of LaCrosse. She lives close to the Mississippi River out in the country, which I imagine is just beautiful!

Denise has a BA in business education and an MA in Education-Library Media Studies. She has been a librarian media specialist for almost 20 years! That’s quite a record. She said she is finished earning degrees, but she is enrolled in this course because she wants to earn the online teaching and learning certification. She also currently teaches an online course for high school students and would like more options for assessment.

She has the same problem I do with online courses: finding the time to do it the way she really wants to. Hopefully this course will give us some “pre-made” tools that we can use toward that goal.

Week 2 Reflection

This week we explored blogs and created one. Voila! It actually isn’t very hard to create and customize it because WordPress is very user friendly. We will continue to use this blog throughout the course. I am hoping to continue to customize it as we progress.

I originally thought blogs were mainly for people to list their journals (like this) or perhaps the steps in a journey. I also saw some blogs that were like news articles, except people could post comments about them.

I hadn’t really thought of using blogs in the classroom, but the readings this week explained how two teachers did just that. Now I understand that blogs can be a powerful tool for engaging students, both with other students and with the course content. They can be a community building tool, and also a reflection tool. (April Luehmann and Robyn MacBride, (2008) ‘Classroom blogging in the service of student-centered pedagogy: Two high school teachers’ use of blogs’, Then Journal.

URL: http://thenjournal.org/feature/175/)

My favorite use for them is what was called the “Scribe of the Day.” In this activity, one student is assigned the task of writing about what was learned that day in class. My post above (Discussion on Blogs) elaborates on this concept.

I am looking forward to using blogs in the classroom!

Week 1 Reflection

I was very excited to begin a new course about e-learning and enrich my toolbox of online learning resources. We started with an overview of assessment and some basic assessment tools. I had used these tools before, but I had not created them using the specific tools we used (ex: pbworks.com).

The week’s activities reinforced my belief that wikis are great collaborative tools for use in the classroom.

The readings were especially informative. They altered my understanding of assessment. My previous uses for assessment were to ascertain if the students were learning the material. Although I tried to connect the assessment with the way the material would be presented to them in real life (outside the classroom), the readings made me realize the purpose of assessment should really be to tailor the program to the students’ needs and to connect the learners using valuable learning experiences. We should ask ourselves, “What is the student learning?” and “Where should the student be in his/her learning?” Based on the answers, we should design the program to meet those needs. So you see, using the same multiple-choice exam year after year does not accomplish this purpose! (Buhagiar, Michael A. (2007) ‘Classroom assessment within thealternative assessment paradigm: revisiting the territory’, Curriculum Journal, 18:1,39 – 56. URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585170701292174)

The readings also provided an insightful framework for designing learning activities. I especially liked the idea of starting a lesson/unit with a “hook problem” in which the students work on a problem for which they may not have yet learned the skills to solve. The students spend more time discovering the skills than being taught. The final performance task (not a multiple-choice exam!) requires the students to apply what they have learned to a real-life problem. This is the kind of learning that students will remember! (Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2008) ‘Put Understanding First’, Reshaping High Schools, 65:8,36-41. URL: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may08/vol65/num08/Put-Understanding-First.aspx)

I only hope that I will have the time it takes to prepare meaningful learning activities and assessments for my students. I think that many instructors have relied on tests because they either do not know another way, or they are just easier to use (often pre-made). I want my students to understand how to use what they have learned, not just to memorize facts and applications.

Welcome!

Welcome to my e-learning blog! I hope you will find valuable information and interesting posts on this site. Feel free to comment and add to the conversation!

See the Blogroll for links to some great blog sites. My favorite is the Blogs Explained – it is a brief video that explains what a blog is and how it can be used.