Throughout the Create Assignments, I have had an opportunity to show off the different technologies that I currently use to effectively support learning and engagement in my online classroom, which is Standard B. There are some programs that were just introduced in the different lessons throughout Create, which means that I have plenty to practice and work on, but can find my way around. What I would like to improve is my ability to create Portable Learning Objects like those used as examples. This section, Portable Learning Objects, also showed that I can plan, design, and incorporate these strategies into the online classroom. This shows proficiency of Standard C. I think that Standard E has been modeled throughout the Create submissions, and it will continue to be modeled throughout my posts and in my online classroom. I think the most obvious moment it is modeled is in section 2. We were asked to discuss pros and cons of tools we explored. As I reviewed, I didn't always feel it necessary to speak poorly of sites by name. I am a professional teacher, but I am not a pro when it comes to reviewing technological constructs, so it was only fair to label my opinions as such and not name those particular sites. I have to be completely honest, I am still working on Standard K; I would have to rate myself as In Progress. After working for GAVS for several years, I can't help but feel that we are not given the opportunity to practice this skill. The course content is already made for us. We can add in differentiation, supplement the learning with learning objects, etc., but the decisions of order and arrangement are made for us. Even down to the Homepage set-up that we use, the choice is made for us. This is not always a negative aspect, as the course does seem to be strategically built, and through that, I am learning; however, I wonder if there is a way to learn more about transferring knowledge in the most effective fashion.
What strategies are coming with me? What was most beneficial for me? Building Portable Learning Objects is most definitely the skill I showcased, but also the skill that I will continue to build while working for GAVS! This section was also the most beneficial for me, by far, because it has inspired me to self-teach and figure out how to make better portable learning objects that I can share with my department so that it benefits all students. Web Tools for Differentiation is also a portion of this Module that show my proficiency in these standards and demonstrate the quality of work that I offer in my classes. Create has helped me see not only what I do well, but what I need to work on. This is the most important part of teaching- learning. I know that there is still a lot of learning that needs to happen to be the best online teacher that I can be!
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Deciphering how to aggregate and present learning material in the online setting is definitely a challenge. Having worked for GAVS for 5 years, I have often taken the task for granted. Now that I have practiced the same art, it is certainly not a chore without challenges. There are many LMS to choose from. This section of learning specifically talks about Softchalk and Udutu, but also asked us to explore beyond those two systems. Joomla Joomla is an award winning CMS that claims to be an easier option for both the site manager and the visitor. Like any system, there are negatives and positives to using Joomla. The system allows you to upload your material and present it in the order that you choose. Cons One drawback is that you cannot change the size of the media uploaded. In my opinion, while this does not interrupt the cohesion of the content, it can cause confusion in the importance of the material. For example, if I upload a graphic to complement material presented in the video, but the size of the graphic is larger than the size of the video, the graphic takes the attention. Pros There are many positives to this CMS, as well. There are many options in terms of templates and organization. Looking at Joomla now and comparing it to past reviews, not as many plugins are necessary to keep the system updated. It is an easy system to design and navigate, which is the biggest plus!! Another thing I can't neglect to mention is that Joomla will offer a 90 day free trial. The cost, then, is reasonable. I'm sure it depends on how many people will be logging in and using the CMS, but prices start at not quite $10 per month (or I believe paying annually takes the cost down slightly!). Ingeniux
The second CMS that I decided to research is Ingeniux. I chose this particular system because it is used by so many schools, associations, and government agencies. The first thing I noticed about Ingeniux-- expense!! It is very expensive, and they are very forthcoming with the price, which, in my experience, is very rare. I think most companies offer the cost by quote. Pros Looking at reviews, it seems that the physical directory is built on the web server and syncs all of the content. It is fast and has the scalability that some programs lack. Cons Some of the content does not support personalization or data-driven pages. Any dynamic content needs the use of a server side application, which means more downloads! It does require some coding knowledge (which I have seen listed as a pro, but for someone like me... definite con!).
Portable Learning Objects are crucial to the online teaching world no matter if you are online full time, hybrid, flipped, or blended. I love using them; it's not only a great way to bring technology into a face to face classroom but it is an engaging way to keep all students on top of the course content. My three favorites to use in both classroom types are Kahoot, Flippity, and Quizlet. I know I have mentioned all three of these in this blog at least once, but these are great tools to keep in your tool belt as you progress as a teacher today. Let's take a look at what we have:
Quizlet is an amazing site that can be used for many different purposes. My favorite is for vocabulary and grammar structure practice. There are a variety of different ways you can practice these structures, and again, I have posted my favorite above. The "match" game will require that students match the translations of the words/structures offered. The intended use of this learning object is repetition of common structures or vocabulary terms, which comprehensible input states is the most important part of language acquisition. It can be used in the online or blended classes for the same thing- questions, vocabulary, or grammar that students need to see in a repetitive format. My ultimate favorite way to use Quizlet is to use Quizlet live. I highly suggest that if you enjoy using Kahoot that you give Quizlet.live a chance. It puts the students in groups and they hold one another responsible for their learning and accountable for their participation. It is an amazing game!
There are so many tools out there that benefit eLearning. Some require a download, new software, and others are simply web-based. I, personally, like the web-based tools because I download so much onto my computer already that I don't want to add more. Also, I like to be able to access the tools that I use from any computer since I have a personal computer and a work computer, as well. I think the is a feature that teachers should play close attention to before choosing a tool because if software or downloads are necessary, it limits where you can access your material. It might also limit who can access it, since a lot of our students are using phones or devices that cannot necessarily download. For this unit, I explored a lot of these learning objects; I had a very difficult time deciding which two to showcase in my assignment, actually.
Many of the eLearning tools I explored are very similar to D2L in the sense that a teacher can post images, videos, give quizzes and tests. One that I liked is LAMS International. LAMS affords many different options. You can view other courses to see what others are doing, but you can author your own, as well. It appears to be much like a GAVS course. Other courses include the standards and objectives on the first page, and then you go through the content just as you would on our Brightspace setup. You can build assessments, chats, you can use data collection tools, discussion forums, gmaps, image galleries, mindmaps, and many other options that I can not even familiar with! There is a demo option, but I am sure that this is limited. It does not advertise prices; I would imagine because they want you to use it and fall in love. I have used other sites similar to this, like Moodle, for example, and I like LAMS better. The setup is more user-friendly and organized. I would say that a teacher that wants to use an eLearning tool in the face to face classroom should check this out. I do not see much benefit for an online teacher, at least not through GAVS, simply because we offer most of the same options in the setup that we currently use. The second learning object site that I chose to share is Flippity. This site gives you many options, also, and it is all linked to your Google Drive, which I love! I store so many things on my Google Drive, so this helps me stay organized, actually! Some of the options include a quiz show (similar to Jeopardy, but all students answer in each round), it has a random name picker, flashcards, tournament brackets, crossword puzzles, bingo, hangman, mad libs, quizzes, and many other options! You get to fill out the questions and answers- or information in general- to match your course content and present it in whatever way you see most fit. For GAVS, I have loved to use the game show, especially for review games. Each student gets must answer each question each time rather than only answering when they choose the question. I like this because we lose too many when they have to wait to be rewarded. Each group wins or loses points with each question, so they must submit an answer, being engaged during the entire game. This is a feature that I would suggest the online teacher search for because it is quite easy to lose the students if they are not all working all the time. This tool can be used in the face to face classroom or in the synchronous classroom, all the same. I definitely suggest trying this one! Many students might be more interested in learning about United States Geography or Factoring Quadratics, but I am a language teacher... a Spanish teacher, to be specific. In this section- Locating Resources- I am going on a hunt for open educational resources that I can use in my online Spanish classroom. Because I have been teaching for a while, there are several people that I commonly follow online, and now that I am truly learning about Creative Commons, Fair Use, and the TEACH Act, I want to make sure that my favorites are actually legal to use. To keep myself out of trouble, I decided to change the Google search settings rather than trust myself to find accurate licensing information on the material I was looking for. The first charge: an image. Take a look at the steps I took to find an image licensed as an open educational resource:
Filtering in this way will only work if the images are tagged according to their ©. It can limit your search extremely! You can also check the individual © of the items that you find or reach out and ask the author!! The image I have chosen teaches Direct and Indirect Object. I love the set-up and the colors, and I love that it was made by Señor Jordan for educational purposes. Notice that the name of the creator is on the image, giving him credit. I have located an online video designated as an online educational resource, as well. The © information is listed on the YouTube site, but the author's website also clearly states that the videos are free. I have also located two documents designated as an open educational resource. Both documents can be reproduced and modified, and are free of charge!
Feel free to use all of this information to teach yourself a little something about Spanish Grammar! Everyone would be so impressed with your ability to properly use direct and indirect object pronouns!
As an online teacher, it is essential that I understand Fair Use when attempting to gather resources for my class to use for educational purposes (the purpose does make a difference!). I have to know the difference between what I can legally use for instructional purposes if I like my freedom. Copyright infringement is a real and punishable crime!
I am finding that the TEACH Act actually opens up what I thought to be fairly strict laws of Fair Use for teachers specifically. I will use the checklist above when deciding if in my online class I can legally use any type of material and ensure that it is linked only to educational purposes. My approach to finding reliable content has not been changed, but I do believe that the laws are less stringent as what I believed previously. Just to be sure, I will save the checklist above and use it each time I am looking for new material to employ!
Wikipedia calles Open Educational Resources (OER) are "freely accessible, openly licensed text, media, and other digital assets that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes. It is the leading trend in distance education/open and distance learning domain as a consequence of the openness movement." To make a long story short, things on the web are not always free to the public to use, modify and use, etc. We must pay attention to the copyright on each item we intend to use. As a very visual learner, I went in search of an image that would help me understand Creative Commons... a free image, that is. Take a look: You can use advanced settings on Google to make sure that what you use can be legally distributed for educational purposes. Keep in mind, that this means that you must credit the original source. Since there is no marking on the graphic, let me take this opportunity to tell you that it was taken from the BC Open Ed Tech Collaborative. It was in no way modified. Nice, graphic, right? I like how it breaks down each different kind of license with the symbol, and labeling how "free" each item is. Now, I could easily repeat what is in the image above and consider it my explanation, but perhaps I can break it down in everyday terms... like, Creative Commons for Dummies (I wonder if such a book exists!). How is this for a cheat sheet?? I think it is very helpful! I understand these restrictions much better now. Make sure to check the license of all resources you choose to use so that you understand what you can legally do with it!
Differentiating for summative assessments is no different than differentiating for formative assessments, except that you want to be sure that mastery has been achieved at the point of a summative assessment. Using outside resources to guide understanding while completing a formative assessment should lead the student to a stronger understanding of a concept, but for the summative assessment, it is the assumption that the material has been mastered and is to be applied. In a unit in a Spanish class, usually there is a grammatical focal point as well as a theme and vocabulary. For example, one of the units that I teach is on giving directions. The grammar that is taught is the imperative mood (giving commands). The vocabulary is based on city vocabulary terms. Words like pharmacy and library would be found here, for example. Another grammar point would be the difference of the two verbs that mean "to be", which are ser and estar. Being able to use all of these concepts and apply them can be demonstrated in a test, but it could also be demonstrated by creating a dialogue between two people. I chose to use a comic strip assessment of this particular content. Students would need to use commands, ser and estar, and the city vocabulary using the theme of giving directions. This assignment could be offered in place of taking the exam over these topics. The only difference that I see in those two demonstrations of mastery of standards is that it would be easier to use outside sources with the comic strip. Perhaps allowing students to make the comic strip but also video their desktop while creating the comic strip. This would also assist a student with metacognition so that their process is explained step by step and their honesty is not questioned. Now, for my example, I did not record myself creating the assignment, but the finished product is provided. I created the comic strip and outlined the topics above that were required. Asking students to follow suit in marking the concepts that they were to master is a good way to ensure that they are aware of what they studied and where to include those concepts. In my example, I marked the use of ser/estar in green, the use of the vocabulary in red, and the commands in yellow. The site that I used is Stripcreator and is free! It gives quite a few fun options. The good news is that the brain likes images more than words, so it gives a student the opportunity to link the two. In language, there is a double benefit because then words will be linked to concepts rather than translations- that is what we need for acquisition!
Differentiation is a buzz word in education and has been for some time. Tomlinson and Allan refer to differentiated instruction as "a teacher's reacting responsively to a learner's needs." So differentiation can be any type of change in classroom instructional strategies to meet specific needs that are encountered in the classroom. This could be mid-lesson, or following a formative assessment. It could even follow a summative assessment. The most important thing to remember about differentiation is that we must meet the students where they are. Perhaps they come to us knowing all of the information that we expect them to learn in the prerequisite(s) for our course. This might be cause for us to provide accelerated work, or an unplanned depth to our content. Another possibility is that the students need further instruction because there are skills that were not mastered before arriving in our classroom. These are decisions that we sometimes need to make on the fly- in the middle of a class. After teaching the same content for some time, though, we can anticipate the different levels and types of learners.
In a World Language course, teaching to all different types of learners comes naturally because it is part of our job- according to both state and national standards- to touch on all four of the language learning abilities: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Sometimes the level at which we present is not where it needs to be, however. Knowing that, we might need to meet the students where they are and have a variety of content at different levels so the information is accessible to all students. Having worked for GAVS for some time now, I know that in my Spanish class, in every unit, the same types of assessments are offered. One is a listening assessment. The assignment that GAVS gives students is a recording of a native speaker (the majority of the time) along with comprehension questions to see that the students can not only understand the language but answer questions about the material given. One way of differentiating for this type of assessment is to allow students with lower skills to just write what they hear rather than listening to someone and then answering questions about it. Basically, we are just taking it back a notch. I created a dictation assignment for the unit that discusses city vocabulary and grammatically calls for students giving and understanding directions. Eventually, we will want all students to be able to listen and respond to comprehension questions, but sometimes we need to take baby steps to gain confidence and work on mastery. Take a look at the dictation assignment that I made as an alternate assignment for the listening. Just to be clear, a student still needs to be able to recognize the words that the speaker says in Spanish, however, conversations can be broken down in steps. First, the students needs to listen and recognize the phonetic patterns of speech to formulate words. Then the students need to recognize the meanings of the words spoken. At that time, the students can begin to respond to questions about the spoken text. I have broken this assignment down so that the student is only focused on step 1. Once they learn that skill, we can move on. I titled this differentiated lesson ¿Qué escuchas? which means "what do you hear?" to prompt students to simply dictate what they hear. Click here for the link to the lesson I created. This particular site is not one that GAVS mentioned, but it is another I chose to use. The site is called Educaplay. Educaplay has a free platform as well as a subscription platform. It is used to create multimedia teaching activities. You can create things like a video with embedded questions to check for understanding, or something as simple as a crossword for vocabulary practice. It is an excellent site! Click here to make your own Educaplay.
Writing this post will be one of the easiest posts of TOOL up to this point, and probably beyond. I say this because if there is one thing that I already do, it is utilize Web Tools in the online realm as well as in the face to face classroom. I am going to offer five instructional tools that can be used in the online classroom, explain how a teacher can use the tool, how a student can use the tool, and the cost that goes along with it! This type of sharing is what I live for, so if you have some ideas, feel free to comment and share! I promise that I will use them!
Kahoot
Kahoot is a very fun and interactive game that teachers and students can use to review any information delivered in the course. I use it as a formative assessment in the face to face classroom as well as in the online classroom. The online classroom is different, but it is fun to do in the Synchronous Chat. Once the teacher creates the game, the teacher will need to pull the game up on their own computer and then share their desktop. Students will use the code displayed on the teacher's screen and log in. Once all students are logged in, the game can begin. It is an individual competition where every answer earns points for the player. Students love it! If you want a student to use Kahoot without using it as a class, one manner of differentiation is to require students to create a kahoot game in place of a different assignment. As long as the student has all of the answers correct in their game, it can then be used as a tool in a different class! The best part- Kahoot is completely FREE!
Socrative
Socrative is a site very similar to Kahoot. It puts the students in groups where they answer questions and race to complete all questions before any other group. This can be used by teachers in the Synchronous class, just as Kahoot. The positive part is that students will hold one another responsible because they want to win! Socrative is free!! Students can use Socrative to study by looking for sets that already exist on the subject that they are currently learning and study it, or they can do what was suggest for Kahoot- they can make a Socrative set and submit it as a way of differentiation for an assignment in our own Course Content. Remind101 Switching gears from study materials to communication methods, Remind101 is another site that I use in the classroom, both face to face and online. I use Remind101 to remind students about assignments, important events, to send out study sites, or share information of any type. The great thing about Remind is that you can schedule messages in advance. So, as the teacher, we know when the due dates are coming and we know what assignments will be due. This site can be used to schedule reminders for assignment due dates, which is how I use it. Remind has an embed code so that it can be put on our D2L classroom website so that students can join if they choose. The great part for students is that it then enables students to text questions to the teacher if the teacher enables that function. Remind is also FREE!!
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