Mr Loya’s Blogs

Virtual schooling is reform!

Virtual schooling provides the same opportunity of academic success despite what a student’s academic history is so far.   Multiple learning strategies are a focus of virtual schooling.  Instructional design practices require many avenues for success rather than the “get on board or get out of the way” traditional classrooms.  Instructional design conforms the curriculum to the student needs rather than trying to conform the student to the curriculum.  Virtual schooling advocates success for each student no matter how different each student learns.

Collaboration is used as a tool to require students to interact with one another. Students engage in critical problem solving applications with peers when completing group projects or during a presentation by an instructor.  Virtual schooling instructional design itself requires much collaboration.  Virtual schools in most cases are made up of a large team of content experts as well as instructional design experts.  Student’s needs are the driven force behind the analysis of the design team from its origin.  Courses are reevaluated based on research and the success rate of the students every time one is completed.  Virtual schooling is reform based on the student’s need to be academically successful.

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Age does make a difference, is this a surprise?

If one did a study in any educational setting the results would be a same.  Can anyone that is a lifelong learner actually say that they are the same student that they were 10, 15, or 20 years ago?   The age of your target population and the normal study habits for this group should be on of many considerations during instructional design.  With virtual classrooms the virtual teacher has many resources available to help students with these shortcomings.  These same shortcomings of students would be just as problematic in any classroom.  With virtual courses students are empowered to choose which class they are going to take and they are not free.   With the ability to provide many tools to help students much of the responsibility of success falls on the instructional design.  Scheduled reminders, calendar of entire course, lists of projects, contacts and methods of contact,  extra resources of important concepts, anything that would help.  The key to a students success is instruction that is customized for their needs.  Too many times students are expected to adapt to the methods of the instructor.   While the findings supported in this article deal with only responsibility and motivation issues methods of instruction is not mentioned.  With the ability to present material in multiple ways it is logical that the number of students learning will increase.  One cannot argue that retention of material will increase motivation and in turn undoubtedly increase responsibility.

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Scared Straight

The example that the student was looking at looked more like a web page for exploration rather than a class.  Good design would have a clear and concise introduction to the course including goals and objectives.  A syllabus of the entire course outlining what the student will be doing throughout the course.  Many times it is not a requirement to let the student know exactly how much work and time that they are going to be required to avoid the anxiety issue.  It is recommended to design an introduction that will give an overview of what is expected of the student and what the student can expect of the instructor including the grading policies as well as attendance and projects.  The student’s anxiety was increased when she realized that their was no purpose for what she was doing.   She was just exploring based on her own interests in physics.  Blackboard allows for tabs that are purposeful and recognizable for students.  When designing the online course the Virtual Teacher must take into account what the students know.  Virtual Teachers analysis of what the students know must include their computer skills as well as their online experience.  When designing an online course one cannot assume that everyone attending is experienced with online course.  The design must be appropriate for new comers to online instruction.  Providing multiple ways for a student to contact the online teacher is vital.  Usually most problems with the online instruction are simple fixes.   There is no doubt that the anxiety was high when I took my first online course at Wayne State.  By proper and thorough instructional design my anxiety was put to rest.

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Part B

Despite being late, still trying to get into the swing of things, I have come to the conclusion that the success of virtual on-line education remains directly related to the same variables of any good lesson.  The Instructional Systems Design model of instructional design becomes that much more important and time consuming. Virtual design requires more analysis due to having more the choices required for the virtual design of instruction.  This would account for the witnesses from virtual teachers admitting that the time and work is increased.  
Another point of interest that is important for students to be competitive for a job is communitcation.  Virtual classes force students to communicate.  Well developed virtual classes force students to reach out to one another by applying required group assignments.   Well designed  assignments require the students to work closesly with other students in a collaboration for required work.  While students with confidence socially would do well in any setting, students without social confindence will find success easier in virtual worlds and hopfully build their confidence.  Issues that may have cause their lack of confidence may be eventually “put to rest” leveling the field when interviewing for jobs.  By the way does anyone need a partner for the group project in this unit of virtual schooling.  Hope to hear from some of you!

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Virtual Schooling Part A

I have never experienced virtual schooling.  I have read about how students create avatars and attend classes, campuses, and other virtual buildings to experience classes or other activites through the eyes of the avatar making the whole experience seem like a video game.  I experienced a demonstration from one of the links provided by The Horizon  on this subject.   Until I saw that I more or less pictured an Internet correspondence class which is far from the virtual classes now available.  The Virtual Schools are literally Virtual Worlds.

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INTRODUCTION

I am a special education teacher at Wilson Middle School in Wyandotte, MI.  We will have 6th grade through 8th grade fro the first time since 1982.  Not positive on that fact.  I teach different subjects within the 7th and 8th grade curriculums.  The only classes that are self contained are in English and Math at all levels.  With the changes for graduation the number of these classes has quickly been eliminated to include only Cognitively Impaired students.

Wyandotte is south of Detroit and within the Downriver community.  We will have over 1000 students in our building including all ethnic groups.

I am late with my blog due to the fact that I started this class at an earlier marking period and I am finishing it this summer.  I will be in full attendance at the end of this month.  Good luck everyone!

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Part 1 and Part 2

I guess I saved this and didn’t publish.  Better late than never.

Part One

I have experienced different K-12 online environments, but they were all blackboard driven.  Interaction between the students did not exist.  I have had several classes that I have taken that did include student interaction and I have always felt was an integral part for learning.   Courses that were offered were core classes and they were for gaining graduation credits.

Part Two

The fact that on-line courses allow for increased interaction really doesn’t surprise me due to the classes that I have already been in.  I think that teachers and students not familiar with the advantages of on-line courses might try and disagree without experiencing it first hand.  In this class alone we were fortunate to have face to face interactions with a respected well known content expert from a different region of the US.  This is the norm for on-line courses not an exception.  What I find surprising is that there is a myth that believes that it increases cost and also could take the place of teachers.  While it is true that teachers may expand their audience as far as geographically they cannot be more than one person.  With the requirements that are demanded by an instructor on-line it really isn’t feasible to increase a teacher’s caseload more than what is present today.  In fact, teachers would be hard pressed to service as many kids as most of us have present day on-line.  The infrastructure costs is where most of the savings will be made eventually.

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Follow up from last post!

photostory-demo3

This was supposed to be with the last post for an example of what kids can do at the primary levels. 

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After reading the Worley

I truly believe that if Michigan Schools are lacking in technology education it is at the elementary level.  Kids in our district still have the assumption that computers are for play.  While this attitude can be harnessed for motivation it seems that it also causes problems when reality hits.  With my own children, first grade and fifth grade, they have had poor examples of what technology is used for within an educational environment.  One of the staples in our school district for culture awareness is “Where’s Stanly?”  Students send out a paper figure called Stanly reaching out to a pen pal as far as in Asian countries.  They receive the paper doll in the mail, answer some questions, and then send it back with questions.  This type of correspondence is archiac.  While it does require life skills, writing a letter and mailing skills, it does not allow for much growth in its claimed academic focus of culture awareness.  Think of the possibilities by creating a global community based on the same objectives but with the technology that exists in our schools.  No cost just applications that are already in place and free!!  Kids could interact live with other children from other countries and ask questions about things that interest them.  What do you do for fun after school?  What do you eat for lunch I just had Mac n Cheese.  Pictures could be uploaded to destinations with the technology to have an actual face to face experience like on ustream or other applications.  Why is our elementary levels so far behind!  Wouldn’t children be less likely to fall into the traps of predetors with experience that is monitored by qualified adults!!  Children are able to find free games that always lead to inappropriate content regardless of the filters that our IT revises on a daily bases.  Educators need to wake up and do what we are being payed for.  Teachers in our district do not even think that it is their responsibilty at the grade school level.  I have heard from the mouths of educators that technology is great for the older kids but the kids in the primary grades need to learn the basics.  Technology is a basic need for survival and its need for awareness will continue to grow hourly.

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On the Horizon

While finding interest in all of the topics I find the semantic awareness possibilities full of endless potential.  At first glance I thought it was pretty cool but I didn’t realize the impact that such technology could have on our society.  While spending time searching for information on this subject I began to realize what it could do user’s lives of all kinds.  Imagine if you will, computer programs that can actually recognize the preference of the users based on the information collected from a web browser.  Right now we have the technology that allows for programs to recognize certain types of preferences based on the types of information that is entered on such websites as “Pandora” and other music listening sites.  The website is able to recognize the preferred type of genre of music and created “radio stations” only allowing that type of music.  What researchers from numerous companies are working on are search engines that will semantically read each word and trigger filters leading to the preferred information creating a time saving user friendly tool that will allow for even more efficiency for any search, by anyone, for any discipline, company, school, etc. . .    The time that this could save adds up quickly.  We all know that time is money and that time cannot be stopped.   This technology frees up endless amounts of tedious work in all fields!  I am truly anxious to see where the experts are able to take this technology.  Semantic awareness could eventually allow for programs that could analyze your computer system and then hook you up with anything that you could ever want off the internet based on the information analyzed.

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