lifelong learning…

What did I learn this semester? I learned that I can always improve in what I am doing and that I should never settle for mediocre. Things can always be better! I have learned to keep a critical eye on my work as an educator and have learned that the tools available for learning are coming out faster than we can learn them and that keeping up with technology is a challenge in itself. I have also learned that if you can’t explain why you do what you do, then you need to sit down and really consider the reasons you do why you do them. For example, if you ask students to do warm-ups before singing, the purpose is to prepare the voice for singning! If you ask students to reflect on their learning, there should be an underlying purpose, perhaps pushing students to dig deeper into their understanding of material, and learn how to articulate what they have learned clearly.

I know that I have learned these things because I think about them a lot. Now that I know a little bit more about how people learn and how to sequence learning activities in a way that will maximize learning, I think about what I am doing in my classroom each day and try to look for ways to improve and enhance learning in my classroom.

One example of what I really learned is that it IS possible to combine F2F environments and online environments to create a very personalized and motivating learning environment. The online environment provides learning in more than one learning style and appeals to so many types of learners. The F2F environment allows students in a music class to have authentic performing experiences and a place to get to know one another. Having more than one area dedicated to learning can only enhance the student’s overall learning experience.

A second example of what I really learned is that it takes students and teachers to create teaching presence in a course. It is up to the teacher to set the students up for having interactions that really promote learning and teaching. Learning isn’t directional, in that it doesn’t come from a book and go straight into your brain, and voila! you have learned it. It takes interactions, discussions and feedback to make meaningful and deep learning experiences.

What helped my learning in this course was having such great discussions with my classmates and fantastic guiding questions from Alex. She really pushed us to perform at a high level. This was the most challenging course in my Master Degree career at UAlbany. I loved every minute of it. I think that pushing students to perform at higher levels helps them to break the plateu of what they think they are capable of. Usually they are capable of more than you think. It also helped my learning to use diigo and rate my posts. At first I thought it was painstaking and hard, especially when I spent an hour on constructing a post only to recieve a 2, but as I learned that it was more about teaching others, I began to perform better and was more motivated to teach something new and provide a cool resouce in diigo.

I don’t think there was anything that hindered my learning. Learning is what you make it. It is up to you to view challenging things as challenges rather than obstacles. It’s all in how you look at it. I felt that my learning accellerated during the course of this semester and I am happy that I am finishing my masters degree with a feeling of accomplishment.

My feelings about this course are great! I would recommend anyone interested in online course development to take the course with Alex. She makes everyone in the course feel welcome and comfortable, which is the key to being successful and having students who are motivated to working with her. I have learned that I could stand to be a little more personable with my students and our relationship outside of class will grow and this will make the learning that happens in class so much stronger. Relationships and feelings are one of the underlying keys to success in a course. If you have a teacher you like, don’t you want to work harder to please them? I know I do…and I know that I don’t really feel like working for someone who berates my feelings and is insensitive.

Thanks to Alex for a wonderful semester! The learning journey this semester has been quite challenging, but worth every second! I wouldn’t change a thing!

(4)

After reviewing my course again and making the changes I found using the checklist and the suggestions from Alex, I think I’m in pretty good shape. I know that there are always things that I will want to tweak, but I think this is a good start. One big change I made was in my Music Journals. I added a forum for students to submit their work so others could comment on them. I also decided to require students to submit at the end of each module, rather than at the end of the entire course. I really don’t want to read all of those journals in the last week! It might be a bit much. I tried to add a journal, but apparently Moodle doesn’t do that anymore. Alex mentioned using blogmeister, but I need to check it out and play with it a bit before I am comfortable enough to ask students to use it. I also added forums for assignment submission areas so that students could look at each other’s assignments and give one another feedback about them. I think that students will really enjoy this feature and I’m looking forward to seeing how they respond to eachother.

What I have learned about myself during the creation of this course is that it is so worth the work! I can’t believe that I am actually nearing the end of this course. This has been a challenge for me, and I’m proud that I was able to make it through from start to finish…so far! There were some times during the development my course when I felt that I wasn’t sure if the direction I was taking was going to work. I discovered that if I am always looking at my course with a critical  eye and am aware of of how I am organizing information and why I am choosing to use it, my ideas about what to present in my course become more clear.

Another big challenge for me has been trying to blend the best aspects of the online environment and the F2F environment. I think that I have realized too that students can be more independent if I am willing to let them take the lead. Students can be great teachers and asking them to work together to help each other learn is an exciting thought. In the discussion board I created for my chorus, last school year, I was amazed at how quickly the students took the lead. They even started developing questions about the class, almost like mini quizes. They also learned how to speak cooperatively in a discussion, which I think boosted the morale of my F2F meeting times. Learning online is a great chance for anyone to engage in an interactive community of learning. Building relationships in learning environments both on and offline can be the key to unlocking the potential of each individual learner and appealing to more than one type of learner.

(4)

After conducting my own course review, I think I am pretty good shape overall. I spent a lot of time creating rubrics and assignment directions in the past few weeks and I think the time I spent doing it paid off. I did need to update some of my older documents in the course information area, which I did today, because they were outdated already! I had made changes in the actual module structure and changed my mind about how to grade the students from when I had originally created my document, which I think is expected. I also had to change the titles of my modules in the course documents areas and refine my learning activities so that they matched up with what the students would see in each module.I tried to make my tone more inviting and conversational. I also took some time to add a parental permission form because Alex had suggested it back in the beginning of this course. I wasn’t really sure what to say in the document at that time she suggested it, but I think that now I understand that I just need to let parents know what their child will be doing on the web and be sure that they approve of what I am asking for. I also added a portion to the permission slip for the student to sign telling me that they understand that this course is to be used for learning and that they understand that they are responsible for what they are doing online.

I had my 16 year old brother review my course using the peer review checklist and boy did he do a thorough job! He didn’t miss anything. I asked him to review the course because I wanted to make sure that he understood what he was supposed to do and in what order. I figured that if he understood, the students using certainly would! He said that he liked the composition assignment the best because he wanted to use Finale notepad. He also liked the links to the rubrics and asked me to show him how to make a rubric. It was a teachable moment. My brother is good at spotting mistakes in spelling and grammar and finding inconsistencies in wording, so I appreciated him helping me identify where I needed to make revisions.

The next step I am working on in revising my course is making explicit directions about how to participate in assignments and discussions. I have done ok with the assignments part so far, but I think I need to be more clear about the discussions. I need to add a generic page before each discussion that details which buttons to click and add a link to the discussion rubric. I also want to add “milestones” to my course after each module that congratulate students on their work and provide them a chance to play an online game, or do something fun, almost like a reward or incentive for their work.

What I have learned about myself so far during these revisions is that I am really proud of the time I have spent thinking about and evolving my course. It was so much fun to share the course with my brother and he really enjoyed looking at it. He understood that it takes so much time to develop a site and it made me feel proud of the hours I have spent tweaking every little thing. I have also learned that I am becoming more confident in what I am asking students to do and becoming more consistent in my presentation. I am always thinking of new activities to add if I ever revamp this course. There are so many things you can do online, the limit is your imagination and the student’s techno-savviness. I am feeling less overwhelmed and more encouraged to make the course better and better!

One last thing- I feel like every discussion, article and assignment I have done in this course has really made me question why I do things the way I do. This course has helped me become more open and receptive to new ideas and ways of thinking and I believe it has strengthened my teaching ability. There is a certain amount of vulnerability that we each open ourselves to by sharing our courses with our peers. This vulnerability forces each of us to do our best work and think through the reasons why we choose to do what we do in our courses.

What I have learned and considered in this course makes me excited to go back to school in September and work with my students. I have been realizing more and more that I do have a student centered classroom, but I still need to work on improving the student to student interactions and learn to let students take more control, while still steering them in the right direction.

I’m looking forward to reviewing my classmate’s courses and getting feedback on my own! (4)

Alex’s breeze presentation tied directly with “A Follow Up in the Investigation of Teaching Presence” the article she developed with P. Shea. I noticed that there were many recurrent themes, which I thought lent itself to being redundant, which Alex says is a good thing in the Online learning environment. I would agree. Not only did she present this info as a breeze slide show, which appeals to the visual learning style, she also tied it to auditory. Re-reading a lot of what she said in the Breeze presentation in the article reiterated important themes. I think the part of the breeze presentation that impacted me the most was the idea that teaching presence is knowledge centered, learner centered and assessment centered. I am really trying to re-organize my learning activities by renaming them and making them more kid friendly. I am also trying to focus on how I am going to assess student learning in each of the modules. I am toying with the thought to switching the placement of 2 of my modules, the first and the second, to make them flow a little better and allow students to get into content that will serve as a review for them for the most part while they are learning the new course management system. 

I took a look at the courses for observation again and looked at a virtual field trip of an art gallery that really looked neat. I was thinking that a virtual field trip would tie in perfectly with my composers and time periods module. It would be really neat to allow students to get a glimpse of Vienna or NYC without actually traveling there. 

The most difficult part for me this week is trying to keep the online and offline activities separated making sure that the activities I choose are going to be the best fit for the learning environment. This hybrid learning business is much harder than I was thinking. Sometimes I start to think about the possibilities of what I could do and I overwhelm myself thinking about how to make it work in the online environment and how much writing it will be. I need to tell myself to take a step back and look at the big picture to get a better sense of what is important with regard to big ideas, and back off a little on the details. 

What is working is using a new organizer for managing my learning activities in MS word. In the manual Alex said that drafting out the learning activities would be a paper and pencil activity, but I think this is working ok for me. I made a table that outlines each module and lists both on and offline activities and allows me to look at them next to one another. I am hoping that this is going to be an easier way for me to reorganize everything and find the logical patterns of how to present knowledge that is learner centered, develop community spirit and then assess the knowledge. Like I said before, the assessment part is the difficult thing for me, but I am working on it. The manual gives some neat ideas for activities and assessments which I am going to consider using in each module. I just still really have to think about what I am doing a little more and play with some things. (4)