Session 10: Reflections on Learning

Reflections on Learning

Having (almost) completed the 10-week Designing and Delivering e-Learning Environments course, I conclude that the course has convinced me of the power of e-learning.  I now have a strong appreciation for the amount of planning involved in any e-learning course.  I also have a better understanding of what it takes to facilitate group work and group discussion in an e-learning setting, and I feel that e-learning can be a powerful tool in any course.  This course has changed my perception of e-learning by giving me a better understanding of how e-learning works and how e-learning can encourage deep learning for all participants.

The initiative that I developed for the course is intended to help the Algebra I teachers at my school develop a collaborative planning space.  My initiative would be extremely relevant to the Algebra I team at Northwestern, and I am confident that most teachers would find the online sessions and f2f meetings useful to their work.  I am not sure if I will implement the initiative because don't know if I will return to Northwestern next school year and I also don't know if my department chair will support the initiative.  

In any case, I think that my e-learning initiative is a strong model for developing a shared online collaborative space, and the outline of the initiative would work with any team of teachers at any school.  Perhaps it is something that I can bring with me to another school or to another department in the future.

As I look forward and think about the use of e-learning in my future teaching and professional career, I think that it will be important for me to stay abreast of tools and practices in e-learning.  I will certainly need to develop e-learning initiatives in the future, either for my students or for other staff members, and this course has helped me to learn about tools and strategies for e-learning that I can apply to these future initiatives.  

Thank you!

Session 3: Reflections on Learning Assignment

Share your thoughts and ideas about the e-learning initiative you are developing.  Have you selected a topic yet, and if so, what is it and why did you choose this particular initiative?  What knowledge or skills do you bring to designing the initiative?   If you haven't selected an initiative, what are you considering?

I teach Algebra I in a large high school just outside of Washington, DC.  I recently began working at the school, and I am still learning a lot about how teachers collaborate within each department or within each grade level.

In my short time at the school, I've noticed that the math department does extremely little collaborative planning.  Teachers plan individually, and while all teachers follow the county-mandated curriculum, resources and lesson plans are not shared between colleagues.  As a teacher new to the school but not new to the content, I know that I have some exciting ideas for upcoming units but I don't have a space in which to share my ideas, get feedback from other Algebra I teachers, and hear other teachers' ideas.  

I'd like to create an online collaborative space for Algebra I teachers at my school to share content.  I'd like teachers to upload lesson plans and unit plans, share thoughts and ideas, and think reflectively about the new Common Core curriculum that we are teaching this year.  

Before teaching at my current school I worked as an instructional facilitator among many schools across the country.  I supported teachers who taught the same 9th grade reading course, and teachers often asked me where they could find other teachers' lesson plans.  Sharing lesson plans between schools was difficult for copyright reasons (the curriculum that teachers were using was copyrighted by Johns Hopkins University), but I was able to ask teachers to collaborate within their own schools.

A few teacher groups chose to use Google Docs, and others selected Dropbox as their platform of choice.  I worked with a colleague to start a wiki on pbworks, but few teachers were interested in using that software for sharing lesson plans.

I propose to start a collaborative lesson planning space on Wiggio.  I used Wiggio briefly at a school in San Antonio to start a professional learning community, and I think that Wiggio has a lot of features that we may be able to take advantage of as we share materials. 

I hope that an online collaborative space will help to build community within the math department at my school.  In the six weeks that I've worked at the school, I've noticed a distinct lack of community in the math department.  Our readings from this e-learning course describe "community building" as an essential element of an online course.  I hope that the shared purpose and goals of the Algebra I teachers at my school will help us to build a community online, and I hope that our online community can help us to develop a stronger face-to-face community.  

This initiative will be a blended initiative because it will be partly online and partly in person.  With such a large school, though, I expect that this initiative would work best if it were mostly online.  The online community will allow each of the Algebra I teachers to work asynchronously and to work whenever they have a free moment during the school day.  The Algebra I teachers do share a common planning period, but other tasks prevent the group from meeting face-to-face.