Three Roles

28/Feb/2011 09:52 PM
The course is finished and the last eight weeks have gone by very quickly. I always appreciate the opportunity to be a student again. It helps me be a better administrator by keeping things in perspective when I experience the same accomplishments and frustrations as my students. We had excellent and professional conversation about student learning. Throughout the course, we maintained our own learning by focusing on the learning of our current and future students. The topics we explored about were extremely timely, relevant, and practical. It will help me to be a better principal because I can support and recommend so many new technologies for my teachers to use. After introducing blogging, wikis, surveys, and other Web 2.0 technologies at a recent in-service, I'm happy to say many more of my teachers are beginning to explore and utilize these new tools.

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Final Project

26/Feb/2011 12:42 PM

My final project for the Assessment in E-Learning class can be found here. I think I have succeeded in creating the beginnings of a good and solid online course about Differentiated Instruction that could be used by teachers for professional development purposes. I tried to make the connections between the different class components easy to follow and understand. I present a learner-centered course overview using the Curry/Samara Model and arranged according to Bloom’s Taxonomy. I have written objectives for each module, specific learning objectives for authentic and real-world tasks, and detailed assessment plans with rubrics. Diversity of student learning styles is honored through the use of different learning activities, products, and web technologies. Although only five lessons are currently planned, I will continue to develop the course so that I could teach it if the opportunity arose.

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Rubrics and Assessment

18/Feb/2011 10:22 PM
This week in our Assessment for E-Learning class, we had to read three interesting articles. I took away from Dr. Khalsa's article the understanding of the importance of community and collaboration in designing online instruction and the ease in which modern tools can make this happen. From Peterson's article, I gained the understanding of the importance of using technology tools to coach online students to higher learning through feedback and formative assessments. Lastly, the Koohang et al. article reinforced my understanding of using constructivist instructional design for deeper student learning and collaboration.

The common thread that runs through all three articles is that the greatest learning takes place within the confines of shared experiences, collaborating with other people, and learning from each other. It is our job as online instructors to design the best course possible which includes higher reaching goals and objectives, complex thinking activities, self-analysis, and social interaction. We then facilitate students to reach higher levels of learning through coaching, community, and collaboration.

After reviewing the objectives and activities of my final project on Differentiated Instruction in context of the readings, I have included the aims of constructivist learning in my course. However, I realized that I was missing the collaborative piece. I went back to my plan and modified some of the activities to be more interactive and collaborative.

I had a revelation while working on the rubrics for the assessments in my final project. I came to the conclusion that analytical rubrics had the potential to keep students from doing their absolute best and performing with the highest achievement. Many students will “settle” for second best because it is “good enough” for them or they might think it’s too difficult to attain the highest proficiency level. Rick Wormeli in his book, “Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Assessing & Grading in the Differentiated Classroom” supports this idea. To overcome this limitation of analytical rubrics, I created a rubric with three proficiency levels, Exceeds Expectations, Meets Expectation, and Needs Revision. With this system, I could set the criteria very high for the Meets Expectations and reward those who would go above and beyond. At the same time, students who didn’t meet the expectation would have to revise their product until it did. I was assured that every student achieve the objective by meeting the expectation.

While this was an improvement, it still had the potential for students to only meet the expectation. Wormeli presents a different analytical rubric by which only the criteria for a “Standard of Excellence” is specifically spelled out. Students only see the “above and beyond” and work towards it. I’ve decided that I will use this style of rubric for my final project.

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DI Pre-course Survey

16/Feb/2011 10:57 PM

Here’s a link to a pre-course survey that I developed for a “Differentiated Instruction” online course. The survey has 10 open-ended questions that are designed to help me know more about the teachers who take the course.





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A Trip Down Curriculum Lane

10/Feb/2011 09:37 PM
We started to work on our final projects for the Assessment in E-Learning class this week. Part of the project is to develop four learning objectives and assessment tools that are linked to Bloom’s Taxonomy for a future online class that we will teach. I envision an online class about differentiated instruction that will be used as professional development for teachers. As I thought about this class, I knew had to have an idea of the “big ideas” and the goals that participants will learn. Once that was achieved, specific objectives could then be written. I soon realized that I was creating a “unit” of learning, just like when I was teaching.

I can remember a few incidents that dramatically changed who I was as a teacher. One such incidents was a week long class I took in the early 90’s. The class was about developing instructional units for middle school students. We learned how to design units that incorporated Bloom’s Taxonomy with product based learning. It was the first time I had heard the terms “rubric,” “multiple intelligences,” and “learning styles.” The instructor was incorporating current research in gifted education into classroom instruction for all students. I loved the idea of it all and fully embraced the concepts. I started planning and teaching with these ideas immediately. I even used the unit design in my Master’s thesis on integrating different subjects into a middle school science class. In a way, my story reminds me of Dr. Cynthia L. Corritore from Creighton University and how she transformed her teaching.

It has been 13 years since I planned my own instructional units. For the final project of this Assessment class, I started to use the old familiar planning grid I used to develop a unit. On the grid, Bloom’s Taxonomic levels are written across the top and down the first column from simple to complex are the concepts or big ideas of the unit. I posted an example of the planning grid on the discussion board and some of my classmates liked the style. One asked if I owned the copyrights. Of course I don’t, but I thought I should try and find out to give credit to the real author. I couldn’t remember who presented to me way back when, so I searched and found it! I’ve been using the Curry/Samara model for curriculum design. It was like finding an old friend. I did make one mistake though. Instead of the two highest levels of Bloom’s (Synthesize and Evaluate) that I used, Curry & Samara use Creative Thinking and Critical Thinking.

For the final project, I have decided that each module will be a separate big idea. From there, I developed learning objectives and activities. I also took Dr. Khalsa’s suggestion to include a separate assessment field, and my classmate’s suggestion (Thank you, Ellen) to include an analysis of current students. You can view the draft document here.

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