EDLD 5368 Reflection: Week #5

• What benefits do you see in educators knowing how to design and implement online learning?

In the near future, online learning will become even more prevalent than it is today, and as educators, we need to be prepared to design lessons for that environment. The economic pressures and lack of funding for schools force teachers and administrators to think creatively about learning solutions. Online learning can reach a greater number of students than might fit in a classroom, so the cost of education is minimized compared to a traditional classroom. Another benefit of online learning is the ability to differentiate instruction. If the teachers in my district were trained in designing and implementing online learning, students would have more options for educational experiences, and they would have the flexibility and freedom to learn at their own pace and in their own learning styles.

• How will you professionally use your course that you designed?

I set up my Schoology course to reflect skills that I normally teach at the beginning of the school year, so I am looking forward to enrolling my new students in the fall and allowing them about two weeks to go through my unit. I designed my activities in a way that each lesson builds on the next, and if a student goes through the entire process, the learner will experience learning on a deeper level. Therefore, I plan to use this unit in the fall, and I will share it with my colleagues so they can see how easy it is to set up an online learning experience. If all goes well, I may use Schoology in the place of Moodle since Schoology has a focus on social networking for learning which I know my students will really enjoy.

• Will you integrate online learning in your role as a teacher/staff developer?

I will integrate online learning in my role as a teacher and as a technology specialist on my campus. My school has already begun relying on online learning for staff development, so this will be nothing new for teachers on my campus. With free software available such as Schoology and Moodle, it is simple to design online classes for both teachers and students. An added benefit is that teachers, like students, can access their online classes at any convenient time, so the process of setting up a schedule to meet is unnecessary. Also, the same professional development can be repeated multiple times for a variety of users without the necessity of having the instructor present for the training. The one drawback to online learning is that it might be easy to “cheat” the system by copying a friend’s answers or going through the information without reading it, but hopefully, as professionals, the teachers would take the online training seriously and realize that it has something valuable to offer.

• What questions do you still have about online learning?

One question I still have about online learning is its practicality in low socio-economic districts. Most of my students in my regular classes do not have access to computers at home, although a growing number of them have smart phones with Internet access. I am fortunate right now to have a full-time COW in my room for my students to use for online learning or any number of technology projects, but what happens when classrooms do not have access to one-to-one computers, or the students are supposed to participate in online learning at home? We can tell the students to go to a local library, a friend’s house, or stay after school to work in the computer lab, but the plain truth is that most kids these days play sports or work after school until late at night. Even if they don’t have these prior commitments, their parents simply do not have the time to take them somewhere to let them participate in online learning.

• What will you do with this new learning?

Wiggins and McTighe’s book, “Understanding by Design,” offered many new suggestions about how to design instruction using the “backward design” process. Although this process was somewhat familiar to me before, now I finally understand the reasoning behind designing units in this way. As teachers, we need to continually plan our lessons with the end in mind and decide exactly what it is that we want our students to achieve. Teaching should not be about “covering the material” and assigning activities; we should continually reflect on our goals and objectives and focus on the six facets of understanding (Wiggins & McTighe, 2000). Additionally assignments should be interactive, performance based, and require active participation. Of course, this process is time consuming, but I have realized the benefits of my students’ increased understanding in my classroom. I have already begun to integrate these ideals into designing my lessons, and I will continue this backward design process in the future.