I think this unit was more challenging than the other four units because some of the quests wanted examples from the teacher’s current course. For instance, 2.1.2 asked for a screenshot of a competency but I am currently not a virtual teacher. I read on a participant’s blog that she experienced the same feelings and thoughts I did about providing a screenshot when one was not available. I overcame the problem by creating a hypothetical competency for a course I could teach. I am glad I have made it to the end of this course. I learned new skills, new tools, and I enjoyed reading what other teachers had to say on each quest. I hope to meet these teachers and have discussion with them so I can learn even more from them. I can only improve my teaching skills by seeking wisdom and advice from others while learning from my own mistakes in the classroom.
Is this really the last quest on TOOL? I feel relief to have made it to the end, but now I am nervous on whether or not I will be offered an online teaching position with Georgia Virtual. I have experienced the disappointment of interviewing for the perfect teaching job only to be overlooked because I did not have enough teaching experience needed or the right teaching certificate. For example, a principal in the county told me if I got certified in history then my chances of employment would increase. I studied really hard and passed the history GACE. I was exited to tell the principal I passed the GACE, but then she tells me it was not good enough, that I needed to be certified in more than one area of social studies because compared to other candidates I would not be picked. Taking her advice I studied for the political science GACE. Please understand my background is not in social studies, but in Family and Consumer Sciences, so preparing for a challenging test in a different subject was hard. I passed the political science GACE and again told the principal of my success. There was a job opening in social studies at her school and I thought because I had followed her advice she would consider me as a candidate. I did not even get an interview for the position. I learned a person with years of teaching experience and a general social studies certificate was hired. I felt crushed and defeated. At the time I thought I would spend the rest of my days working as a substitute teacher. I turned in my resume at the small private school in town thinking I had nothing to lose. To my surprise the principal interviewed me for the history position. A month later I was called back for a second interview with the principal, the middle school director, and the high school director. I brought my student teaching unit binder on interior design even though the interview was for a history position. Two weeks went by and I received a call that the history position was filled. Again, I felt disappointment, but I knew I still had a job working as a substitute teacher to fall back on. Then, on the Friday before the first day of school the private school calls me and offers me a full-time teaching job! The principal and directors decided I had the right teaching qualities to teach at their school. The best part of this story is I was offered to teach my subject content, FACS. I was told more than once by veteran teachers that I would never teach FACS because there was no need for the subject in schools anymore. It is true that most school systems are cutting electives from their curriculum due to budget cuts.
I have two and half years experience working as a substitute teacher. That experience has taught me to be flexible and learn to teach any subject offered to me. I have been the teacher of high school art and photography, the teacher of high school government and sociology, the teacher of eleventh grade literature, and more. I think my experience as a substitute teacher has taught me to be strong, not to lose hope, and keep striving to be the best candidate for when the right job opens. This has been my first year as a classroom teacher with her own classroom. Three periods are devoted to monitoring GAVS students. I have seen the other side of the virtual classroom thanks to this role. I know most students do not read teacher feedback, most students are too lazy to do the self-assessments, and I know most parents do not create a parent portal account. Those students are barely passing the course compared to the students who have parent involvement, submit assignments on time, and read the teacher feedback. I was given the role of yearbook adviser even though I have no experience in creating a yearbook. Despite the lack of experience, the principal trusted me with this role. The Jostens yearbook representative visits me at least once a month to two months to monitor our progress on the yearbook and collect dues. During the last visit he told me he was happy I was the yearbook adviser because I had done an excellent job in promoting yearbook sales and raising funds to pay Jostens. Thankfully, he told my principal his opinion on my performance so she knows I have done everything in my power to create a great yearbook and meet the sale goal of 100 yearbooks. As I mentioned before I teach middle school FACS at my school. I have received a lot of positive feedback from parents and students. The high school students take notice of what I am teaching the middle school students and some have asked if they can take my class next year as a high school credit. A parent told me she enjoyed learning the material her son was learning in the classroom and she wished she could have been a student in the classroom. The last class I am responsible for teaching is computer skills for preschool four-year olds through second grade. The four-year olds play education games and the older students type their spelling words. The teachers are very happy that I have taught the students the ability to type and print in Microsoft Word. In conclusion, I have the ability to learn new teaching skills (as evident in this course) and the ability to teach almost any subject because I strive to be the best teacher possible, despite lack of experience. I always seek advice from more experience teachers, teachers who have taught the course, or teachers who are currently teaching the subject. At first I was not sure I would be able to survive the TOOL course because the long list of quests was overwhelming. Thankfully my desire to want to teach an online course overshadow my insecurity of completing this course. Pleae visit my LinkedIn account: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonranlar Feedback on Navigate Capstone: Thank you for taking the time to share your Navigate Capstone with me. I enjoyed the opportunity to view your hard work and provide feedback. Mastery - Jonnie's capstone presentation is organized and easily followed. Direct links are provided. Mastery: Jonnie's capstone demonstrated a complete and coherent understanding of the required concepts and skills for Navigate. Verifier noted that Jonnie did a great job at communicating the best practices of Lecture Capture when she said, "Posting the recorded lessons allow students review before the exam. Also, students can pause the lecture when writing notes. Allowing the students control over the lecture duration will help the individuals who need more time to process the information." Not only can lecture capture allow students to revisit lessons and difficult concepts, the teacher can also create short segments to provide instructions on assignments and other how to videos. In the LMS Reporting Quest, don't think of the types of reports that you can print, but rather who has access and how they use it. The various levels would include Student Level, Teacher Level, Course Level, and Program Level. Each level will utilize the information differnetly in planning and helping students achieve success. " Mastery- Jonnie's capstone provided an overall description of Navigate skills with reflection upon its impact. Jonnie reflects, " I liked this unit more than the Participate unit because I experimented with Adobe Connect and Haiku. Even though I have now created several accounts for more sites than I can recall, I have learned how to navigate sites I did not know existed and I can incorporate these sites into my physical classroom setting. Thanks to this unit I feel more confident in my ability to be an online teacher. "As an online educator you will find you are introduced to many tools and resources. It is important to be able to adapt to the ones that best fit the needs of you and your students. I am glad that you were able to take away some resources for your current classroom. Overall: Mastery Feedback on Communicate Capstone: Criteria 1: Overall Portfolio Presentation - organization, thoroughness, style Mastery: Jonnie's capstone presentation is organized and easily followed. Direct links were provided. Criteria 2: Required Capstone Skills - see checklist for details Mastery: Jonnie's capstone demonstrated a complete and coherent understanding of the required concepts and skills for Communicate. Jonnie has clear understanding of techniques for effective online communication in a virtual classroom. Blog artifacts include: thoughtful reflections, discussion of effective teaching tools included for news/newsletter items such a Voki, a Powerpoint Presentation sample rubric and a Participation in class sample rubric both from Rubrics4Teachers, an outstanding discussion of digital feedback tools including “summing up discussion”, “peer feedback”, and “feedback from the future”, audio tools, and positive feedback images. Regarding communication Jonnie says, “As humans, we rely on technology, which is great because technology has its benefits, but we can't let the machines dictate our lives. We need to keep everything in moderation and create balance in our lives.” I think this is a very good point to drive home, Jonnie! My husband and I used to also eat dinner in front of the TV like you said as well, and we not eat every meal that we are at home for at the table and it makes such a difference in our communication! Criteria 3: Capstone Perspective Paragraph - reflection Mastery: Jonnie's perspective offered an overall description of concepts within the communicate skill. Jonnie says “I have noticed some participants write lengthy in-depth posts in their blog whereas others post a few sentences but still demonstrate understanding of the material. I think this will be similar with virtual students. Some students in a discussion forum will post a long paragraph describing their three day food journal experience whereas another student will express their own experience in two sentences.” I think this is a good thing to keep in mind, Jonnie. It is not about the length of a post or answer but about whether the participant/student truly understands the material and point of the lesson/quest/assignment. Very nice job! I am happy that you were able to take away some new communication tools for your classroom. I agree that good communication skills are essential to good online teaching. Thank you for sharing your capstone with me. Hopefully the other capstones will be verified soon with the level of Mastery. :) I created a hypothetical heat map for a fake chapter 4 with fake student names. Please see document below. Key: Dark Purple = A; Dark Blue = B; Light Blue = C; Yellow = F
Based on this hypothetical map I would need to reach out to Keith who is not performing well on assignments and failed to submit the video assignment. I left the exam column blank because I am reviewing this heat map a week before the exam to determine if I need to create an assignment to help students bring up their grade or reinforce important key concepts in the chapter. Most of the students have performed very well in this chapter earning A's on assignments. Based on this data I would create review game for the students and host a synchronous session to review the chapter going over some exam questions and answers. The next chapter I would create a group assignment pairing Mary, Kelly, or Tim with Keith because Keith needs some peer guidance in the course. I would also pair an A earning student with a C or B earning student. Pairs would be based on assignment strengths. A more creative student will be paired with a student who is less creative but has a strong understanding of the material. For a future assignment I can give the students an option of creating a video, a PowerPoint, or writing an essay. Allowing a student to choose which format will give the student the power to exceed because they know which format works best for learning needs. Currently I am not a virtual instructor, therefore I cannot provide a screenshot or example from my course. However, I can provide a project I had my students create at Metter High School to display their understanding of the Georgia Performance Standard I was teaching. I always provide a teacher example for my students because it gives them a clear idea of what I expect from them. Above is the teacher example I created for the Disease Fighting Food Flyer. The purpose of this assignment is for students to discuss nutrition strategies to prevent the development of chronic disease during the middle adult years (FCS-FNL-7: C). In the document above the purpose and instructions of the assignment is outlined for the students. When you scroll down to the next page you will see the rubric I used to grade the students. This was the first unit I ever taught in the classroom and my rubric is not very good. I have learned how to create better rubrics for projects. Teaching is about experimenting and learning what works and what does not work.
Below are images of a teacher keeping record of communication with a student's parents/guardians because the student is failing the course (in the left image) and the student is performing exceedingly well in the course (in the right image). Keeping a communication log is ideal for teachers in the physical and virtual classroom. In a way it protects the teacher from any blame a parent/guardian will throw at a teacher for not informing them of their child's performance in the course. The image above is an example of student's log in record, how many times and how long the student was logged in to the course. This is an excellent tool for the teacher because a teacher can address the lack of time spent logged in to the course with a student if the student is not performing well. A student in my second period emailed their teacher asking for assistance because he was failing the course. The teacher reviewed his logged in data and replied that he needed to be spend more time logged in reviewing the material and working on assignments. Once the data showed he was putting in the effort to learn then the teacher was more willing to provide assistance.
Based on all the images provided I think this teacher is doing an excellent job of communicating with parents, providing constructive feedback to the students on assignments, and allowing the students to review missed questions on the quiz. I will need to remember this teacher's fine example of effective online instruction when I have my own virtual classroom. Below is the assessment I created for my FNL unit plan during my practicum semester at Metter High School. Below is the analysis document I created based on the students' performance on the quiz. I had to delete the column with the students' names to protect their privacy. Based on the students' performance I should have spent more time reviewing the key concepts I wanted them to know for the quiz. I could have played a Jeopardy review game or a matching game. It was my first time teaching an unit and I can't improve my teaching skills without first making mistakes and learning from them. I have learned students need review, review, review before a test or quiz.
Authentic feedback is essential for the student to feel a connection with the teacher. Also, the feedback allows the teacher to guide the student in the right learning direction if the student does not display full understanding of a concept.
I do not have a student example for this quest. However, I can pretend I have a student example. ABC Mineral PowerPoint On the each slide the students will have the following:
There are 16 different minerals our body needs to stay healthy. Let's pretend a student submitted a PowerPoint with only 14 minerals and some of the slides are missing the requirements listed above. Keith, your PowerPoint only includes 14 of the 16 minerals we discussed in this chapter. The first ten slides include all the information needed per slide, but your last four slides are missing recipes. I noticed you submitted this project at 11:40 pm on the date it was due. To be successful in this class you need to work on projects before the due date and not rush through an assignment at the last minute. Planning ahead will result in the ability to complete assignments and ask the teacher for help if needed. Your fist ten slides display your understanding of the assignment and the importance of minerals. Grade: 65/100 This link provided several ideas for me to use in my virtual classroom. I have not taught a virtual class before so I do not have any examples to show like the other participants in the TOOL course.
ABC Mineral PowerPoint Based on the ABC book suggested at the link listed above but instead of a book I decided to transform it into a PowerPoint. On the each slide the students will have the following:
Baking Cookies Video The students will be assigned to bake chocolate chip cookies and record a video of the process.
Create a recipe based on nutritional needs Students will create a recipe for an athlete, a pregnant woman, and a diabetic person. The student will explain the difference between the three recipes based on the individual's nutritional needs. |
ArchivesCategories |