Please take a
moment to read my insights about creating my final project for this course:
1. Creating
just another website or Weebly to host the project seems redundant or
repetitive to the website e-portfolio and also course toolbox we were to do. I wanted
to host my project on a full webpage with a web-layout but thought that some
variety was in order. Instead, I chose to use a Blog to host my project as an
experiment. Did it work? Different, but challenging, and yes!
2. The assessment
toolbox feels more to me like it should be qualified as something different
than the final project. The final project, to me, feels a sampling of work from
the course all put together to showcase what has been accomplished. A toolbox,
for me, feels more like a listing of resources to immediately click without having
to read too much.
3. Using a
blog for a final-project hosting site is somewhat unusual. I originally was
going to use a Weebly, but thought that was too standard (been there, done
that). I then started doing a Google Doc, and everything was laying out nicely
just like a fancy Word document in a linear fashion. I decided that if I am
going to do it in a linear layout anyway, that I may as well use a blog site to
host it online where people will have more convenient access. The linear design
is different, but still doable for something creative and ‘off the wall’.
Two insights about
my Goals from the Beginning of the Course:
1. Within the layers of the SAMR
ladder, my original goal was to be fully at the top level of redefinition where
most or all lessons/activities are centered around higher-order thinking
skills. I realized then that it isn’t so easy to always do this with studying
literature, and that I would have to learn new ways to guide students into
activities that explore connections of texts and deeper meanings beyond just
the entertainment value of reading the books. I wanted more application-related
creative projects, as I am a very creative person. I do feel that I came up
with quite a few creative projects in the development of my children’s
literature class through this course.
2. I originally fell between augmentation
and redefinition as the norm for me. For teaching literature online, I haven’t
had many opportunities to develop lessons or activities that fall under the redefinition
layer prior to this course. I now create activities, assessments and discussions
that provide more engagement and freedom to tie in learning with a creative
project and offers a personalized approach tailored toward the students. I now know
to use higher-order thinking skills when creating lessons and assessment, which
was not held in my awareness prior to this course.
One question
that I still have about Assessment in E-Learning:
1. With the new ‘modern’ focus on
formative assessment that is student-centered in online classrooms, is there
even room anymore to offer summative assessment (like inn the old days) with
quizzes, mid-terms and final exams? Should they be avoided all together?
Emily,
ReplyDeleteDoing the project as blog was different from your classmates, but it is good to experiment with different tools as you complete these courses. That's how you learn. As I completed them, I typically used Google sites mainly because I did not have the time to try and learn a new tool. That was one disadvantage of doing the four previous courses one after the other.
Dan
Emily, sure you can have a summative assessment. That's what the portfolio is. But if you'd like to use a traditional type quiz or test, there are many online quiz and test builders out there that we shared in this course. It's always important to have variety... and of course you want your students to be able to remember facts and write well. It's also important that they be given the opportunity to synthesize their learning and hit those higher levels of Bloom's.
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