Week 15 - Final Reflection

Looking over my old blog posts, I read conflicted opinions in most of them. I must admit that these conflicted attitudes still exist relatively openly. Education is such a highly charged social issue today. Whether it is face-to-face or online education, there will always be people who challenge both the status quo and the innovations. This is both reassuring and frustrating. Like any social issue worth discussion and action, there will very rarely be consensus.

I came into the class knowing absolutely nothing about online schooling in our country today, outside of the direct exposure to my own online classes. If someone had offered me $1000 to name one program in the country, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. Now, I have a solid foundation from which I can speak without ignorance. I’ve even considered whether it would be something that I would want to try in the future (online teaching, that is…)

I think, like any school, there will always be questions about a program’s effectiveness. How is it managed? How do we know if the teachers are doing a good job? How do we measure a student’s success? A student’s social engagement? Which facet of one’s education do we emphasize for the best results? Bottom line? There are just as many questions about the effectiveness of online education as there are regarding face-to-face education across the country. I think choices and options, however, are always an advantage, and if the ultimate question is, “How do we best educate our population?”, we should be doing everything we can to entertain all possibilities or eventualities.

Week 14 - Research Reflection

The most difficult aspect of researching single-gender online education is that there is very little research available thus far. There is, however, a great deal of information on single-gender face-to-face education and also research on gender roles in the virtual landscape. This existing material can serve to create a platform on which to make several assumptions, but I anticipate the next 5-10 years will present a good deal more concrete information on a niche that I believe many companies/schools/programs will seek to fill and address.

Week 11 - Thoughts for the Week

A particular line stuck with me in the readings from this week: “Americans live in a menu-driven society where options are readily available in practically every aspect of life. ‘One-size-fits-all’ is not a concept with which people are comfortable.” (FLVS, p.13) Virtual schooling is clearly on the rise, which makes “a compelling case for personalized decision-making.”

I’m not sure that, “is online schooling better or worse?” is even the question we should be asking. The question might be, “how can we reach as many students as possible in as many ways as possible?” There will always be room for comparison and, as a result, comparisons will always be made. If we can, by means of expanding our methodologies for teaching and learning, offer more options and accommodate more students, we should do our best to explore more possibilities.

The other day, I was at the coffee shop working, and noticed a young high school or college student at a nearby table. She had a laptop up, on which she was tapping out a paper or school assignment. Sitting next to it was an iPad propped up and open to Facebook. Every 5 minutes or so, she was checking out info on her iPhone, maybe texting, maybe playing a game. I won’t lie. I was disturbed by it, at first. Still am, a bit. The sensory overload seemed distracting and unnecessary. However, it made me start thinking about the quote above and my students who are living it. Not only is the “menu-driven” smorgasbord of choices prevalent, it is essentially expected. I want to make sure that I am guiding my own students toward choices that are going to enrich their interactions rather than erode them, and I think that with the right design and guidance, virtual learning can do just that.

On a completely unrelated note, I’ve found a new web site that I’m somewhat addicted to and is great fun for online learning on your own and in the classroom: Sporcle

Week 10 - Comparisons

What did you learn this week that struck you as particularly important in learning about virtual schools? Has your thinking changed as a result of what you learned this week?

This line struck me more than any other in the course of our readings:

“Researchers have challenged the field to move beyond simple comparisons and, particularly given the heterogeneity in results from previous virtual schooling studies, to examine the specific factors that may impact student achievement in the online learning environment.” (McLeod, 2005, p. 8)

While the mission for the week, I realize, was to compare online and face-to face education, I thought the point above was a very persuasive one. Less important than comparing the various approaches is, perhaps, analyzing what components within each approach are the most effective. For instance, professional development and front-end training have been repeatedly mentioned as cornerstones of excellent online programs. Perhaps we should target what the best parts of each approach would be and then seek to make that particular approach better.

One thing is clear to me: the analysis we will see in the next 10 years (comparing face-to-face and online OR investigating just one approach), I believe, will contain much more useful data than what we may be seeing today.

Week 9 - Unit Reflection

Now that you have seen what other people did in creating their units, is there anything that you might do differently if you were to redesign your own unit?

First of all, I thought designing the unit with my partner, Kar Hwee, was an incredibly rewarding experience. I appreciated how we tempered each other with perspective and enriched each other’s experience with creativity and alternate approaches. I wouldn’t trade that experience at all.

I liked the LMS we chose to use, Moodle. I found so many useful tools within Moodle, but given more time, I would have explored many more of the add-on modules that are available within the system. Some of them, such as the oral presentation tool Nanogong, were incredibly useful and innovative, and they allowed us to open up the teaching and learning experience to tools that I wouldn’t have originally thought to utilize. There are so many of these modules that sometimes, the research can be overwhelming. Having others help to sort through those options is key to offering the richest subunits a teacher can muster.

More than anything, I gained a sense of how time-consuming it is to be an outstanding online teacher. For one unit, we probably spent a combined total of hours that would exceed four times what I would spend as an in-classroom teacher. The experience of building a productive online unit confirmed what I have read in several of our resources: don’t underestimate the time it takes to be an exceptional online teacher. What might originally seem like relatively straightforward tasks can easily evolve into an incredibly labor-intensive project but one that can offer enormous rewards in both creativity and overall understanding.

Week 7 - Predicting Speedbumps

There is no question in my mind that my biggest concern when designing a math unit on linear equations is dealing with the math symbols themselves. I find this to be a challenge when using any web 2.0 tools with math. How do I use math symbols effectively, and more to the point, where within that web tool do I access them when they become more advanced ? Most of these applications have their own math modules, and it becomes problematic when one is moving back and forth between them.

The more pressing concern, of course, is not how the teacher negotiates these challenges but how the student does. If the student is not clear on how to write “the square root of 17,” then the student’s frustration regarding the inability to communicate can even overtake the challenges of the material itself.

The other challenge in creating any online program, I believe, is to avoid reinventing the wheel. There is SO much information already online that an instructor can access and utilize. At this point, it may be more about wading through all of the options to find an incredibly effective approach/tool rather than necessarily creating one from scratch. I’m looking forward, however, to working on a unit I can put to use next year!

Week 6 - Ch-ch-ch-changes....

I did not change anything in the Google spreadsheet, but this is largely because my original answers were based on the information that I could gather from the web sites or spokesperson from the school, and this information has not changed. I will note that I finally received a phone call back from Insight Schools, over two weeks after my phone call was originally placed. This makes me concerned for any family wishing to enroll their student. The school didn’t know who I was (I could have been a prospective parent!), so I was frustrated. In addition, the phone call I received was from Insight Kansas. This is like calling your local school to get a feel for the place and instead getting a phone call back from the county school board. It was a "big box business" feel - another frustration!

When answering the question of whether my view of the schools has changed, I would say that it has. I was, even with the simplicity of the state school’s web site (Colorado Online Learning), impressed by the responsiveness and organization of the program. The for-profit school, however, left me wanting a great deal more information. It makes me wonder how a parent/child in search of a niche can feel completely comfortable about making an online learning choice!

Week 5 - TPI Interpretation

I must admit that the results of my TPI were a bit surprising. My dominant perspectives were apprenticeship and nurturing. The apprenticeship, I understood. I was surprised by the nurturing. I don’t know that most of my students would consider me nurturing. Firm and fair? Yes. Approachable and accessible? Hopefully. Touchy-feely? Not so much. Nevertheless, as I considered more of the breakdown of this category, I could understand that while it might not be the me-in-action, it very well could be the me-in-intent.

My principal maintains that if a student believes that her teacher cares about her, she can learn anything. Every year, I increasingly understand her frame of reference. Feel of failure can be pervasive, and I do believe it is incumbent upon a teacher to help deconstruct these feelings. I also believe that it is a teacher’s responsibility to provide the structure in which a student’s deep-rooted success comes from discovery and not just a parroting back of basic information. Understanding that a teacher’s “structure” can be effectively associated with nurturing, I come more easily to understand this category.

My recessive score is in the social reform perspective. I blame this (unfairly, I’m sure) on being a math teacher. After reading the summary on the five perspectives, I’m not sure I really understand all the ways in which a dominant perspective on social reform plays itself out, but it seems as though a humanities approach would lend itself much more easily to the interrogation of text and the critical stances engendering social action. It may seem strange that I’m actually the sponsor of the Model United Nations club at my high school. These club members are all about changing the world and seeking as much information as they can in order to interpret our world wisely, but in my beginning level math classrooms, this approach is less prevalent.

Week 4 - Doubling of Efforts?

Week 4: What did you learn about the design of online courses this week that will affect how you think about this form of instruction in the future?

I must admit that I actually had a hard time finding course demos. There were several Learning Management System demos, but some course demos were “under construction” (for six months? govhs) and others claimed to be course demos but were more about online learning, in general (ncvps)

When considering the design of online courses, I was frustrated, actually. I imagined what it must be like for a parent who has exhausted every learning avenue for their child and is placing another hope in an online opportunity. Looking at the various courses left me underwhelmed, and on behalf of my (admittedly nonexistent) child, a bit depressed about the learning options available.

The other thought I kept having is, “Why are all of these places reinventing the wheel?” I know there are dozens of learning management systems and an abundance of courses and approaches, but there must be SO much redundancy in course development in the online environment. I know this exists in every teaching/school context, but when you can actually SEE it, it’s discouraging. It made me wonder if there would be an innovation (maybe it’s Moodle?) that might trigger the consolidation of systems (as we have seen with Google apps) and allow, therefore, for greater creativity WITHIN a system rather than creating yet another fledgling framework for the presentation of material.

Week 3 - Changing Opinions

How has your thinking about online schools and online schooling changed since the first week?

As interested as I am in online schooling as a concept, I was skeptical at how well it would work, which is ironic since I plan to earn the majority of my master’s degree taking online classes. Three weeks ago, I didn’t have any knowledge of online classes that were taken within a school setting, which seems to be the most sensible way to utilize them. Allow students in rural schools or schools with limited access the plethora of options that any well-funded or well-endowed district or classroom enjoys. This is a foray into egalitarian education, and for this reason, I can appreciate it.

As with any district, school, or program, however, online schools/programs can be wildly divergent. This is more obvious when delving into their differences because “choice” in today’s educational world becomes more of a talking point and a program’s distinguishing characteristics more prevalent. When I went to school, it was the public school or nothing. I didn’t even know private schools existed, truly, until I was in high school. Now that I teach in a private school and I see yet another option available to families, I am both reassured by the choices and puzzled by them.

Ultimately, I am conflicted. My choices in the schools I researched here in my home state of Colorado left a lot to be desired, in terms of both organization and responsiveness (particularly this week’s Insight School of Colorado). Part of my response chalked it up to the idea that, “It’s a chain. They see prospective enrollees as consumers rather than students.” However, I have to admit that vignettes/youtube videos of current and former students left me both encouraged and refreshed. In a national educational environment where it seems as if more and more students are left behind, it’s promising to find innovative options available to capture some of them.

The jury’s still out, however. My opinions from minute to minute are capricious, at best. I don’t recall feeling this fickle about a big idea in education in a long while. In some ways, I feel even-handed and sensible when trying to accommodate new information. In other ways, I feel muddled. I think I’m getting old.

Week 2 - Tweets

These tweets are in the form of questions to a potential online school and are most definitely from differing perspectives:

Parent tweet:

How many of your online teachers also have kids that are taking classes in the program? How many would be satisfied with their own kids taking classes? Why or why not?

Student tweet:

Will I be able to make friends? Will I have a social life? Will it keep my attention when my Xbox is rt across the living rm? Who will be checking up on me? How often?

Week 1 - Suprises and Questions

Surprises

I’d say the biggest surprise is that we have a classmate (Jung Rhee) who has founded his own school. This is amazing to me. I cannot even fathom being able to fuse an educational vision and entrepreneurial mission in this way. I’d like to imagine myself doing something this ambitious, but I think very few are able to execute this type of undertaking. Fantastic.

Other surprises:

• Schools, on the whole, have been improving (Christensen), especially when considering the percentage of students who attend school as compared to the total population. If we look at the (NAEP) scores for math and reading since the early 1980s, the numbers show upward trends.
  
• While the U.S. has spent billions of dollars putting computers into schools, how students learn has changed very little.
  

Biggest Question

My biggest question, prompted by the above-mentioned surprises, is, “If schools continue to measurably improve, then how did we get to the point of near-constant negative rhetoric regarding American public education?” While standards will always shift to bear up new (and higher) expectations, when do the goal posts stop moving? Ever? Should they stop moving?

Introduction - Tanya Komandt

Introduction

Hello, and thanks for visiting my blog. My name is Tanya Komandt, and I’m originally from the Washington, DC area. I’ve called Denver, Colorado home for the past decade and have spent those ten years teaching at a K-12 Catholic independent school (translation: private but not parochial nor governed by the arch diocese) just south of Denver in Englewood, Colorado. I was a 4/5 grade reading teacher for three years, then a science teacher for three years. I’ve spent the past four years as a high school math teacher at St. Mary’s all-girls high school. Prior to Colorado living, I spent a year teaching at an international school in Israel (I’ve always been fascinated by the middle east) and eight years with Borders Books & Music, ultimately as a manager in their store planning department (certainly a better time to be at Borders then now, when they are considering the closing of over 100 stores in the next year). There was a time when Borders was considered one of the big-box bookstore bullies. Now, its demise just makes me sad. I suppose their parallels might one day lend lessons to the rise of an online presence and the consequences for bricks-and-mortar establishments….such as schooling…which might just ultimately follow to…

Why am I taking this course?

I’m currently part of the Computing in Education masters program. I started the program last summer in the intensive program and felt fortunate to connect with students who, like me, were neophytes but also to connect with those continuing or finishing up the program. To be quite honest, I’m taking this class because one of the people I met last summer said it was the best class he had taken at the school. Sometimes, I think the experience of a class is less about the content and more about how it’s delivered. I’m willing to take any class if it’s broadly considered to be both exceptional and relevant. Having said all that, I do have a personal interest, in that I have recently taken on a technology coordinator position at my school. I not only want but also need to be acquainted with trends in both technology education and education using technology.

My experience with online learning

My experience with online learning began this past fall, when I took two classes with the program. I’m not sure I would actually categorize the experience as either positive OR negative, as a whole. I appreciated the flexibility and liked the pacing, overall. In addition, I thought the feedback was largely helpful and timely. I felt, however, that the courses were more self-taught than classroom-based classes I have taken, and while I learned a lot about myself through the process, I must admit that I missed the face-to-face dialogue and collaboration. Like all experiences, though, I find it challenging to judge online learning, as a concept, on my two experiences in the same way it would be unfair to judge a school on the basis of two classroom experiences. I’ll look forward to more honestly reflecting on the effectiveness of online learning after I’ve finished the program, and even then, it might not be a fair assessment! It’s so hard to know!

I look forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts as we progress through the class!