Winter Break Update

It will be a couple of days before winter break starts, but I wanted to share a little project my physics classes have been working on. They have been trying to figure out the speeds, accelerations and forces involved in Mario Kart. They love the idea and after a little grumbling about why they have to take data and cannot just play, the students seem to really get into it.

Week #6 In CEDO 550

Well, another class down on the path to the MEIT. This week we examined the different legal issues surrounding the implementation of virtual schools. Act 222 of 2007 established boundaries about what virtual schools in Wisconsin could look like and how they could behave.  You can read the audit findings that were called for in the legislation here  It is some pretty interesting stuff.  Virtual education is a hot button issue and everyone is trying to control the game it seems.  As access becomes more and more common and technology infrastructure becomes cheaper and cheaper it would stand to reason that virtual education will only grow at an exponential rate. We need to be on our toes to make sure that the growth is not too fast and not too hindered by unnecessary restraints.  What ever happens I feel that I am a little bit more prepared due to this class and its focus on the "hows" of online education.

Week #5 in CEDO 550

This week we took a look at collaborative projects in an online environment. The online socialization provided by group work is always a plus since asynchronous methods of communication tend to be a little faceless and make people not be as civil as they might be. You can see a pretty neat chart summarizing my thoughts below:

We've been looking at the positives and negatives and it seems to me that online education has about a 50-50 rate of positives and negatives. This might help dispel anyone who is too pro regular education or online education. There is a fit for all students and it is great that we have options that can meet the students where they need to be.

Week #4 In CEDO 550

Well the 15 minute presentation went pretty well. It was fun to "take the reins" of an online environment and try out online teaching. We are still in the middle of the asynchronous discussions, but I am amazed at my classmates' level of understanding and ability to communicate. It is awesome being around such passionate educators.

New work this week centers around changing a lesson to make it more student centered.  I have always felt that my AP Physics classroom is very teacher centered because of the amount of content that we have to cover.  This project hopefully will help me move a little away from that and into a more student centered approach. We'll shift a lot of the lecturing to presentations done outside of school and spend more in class time on the important stuff: problem solving.  In order to make this shift I'm going to be using a great app called Show Me that allows you to make small presentations from an iPad. My school has just gotten a set of 15 iPads and I have been wanting to try them out in my classroom, so this seems like a great opportunity.  If you are curious about Show Me check it out here

Week #3 in CEDO 550

This week (well two actually) we took a look at synchronous versus asynchronous discussions and how we can better facilitate student achievement and engagement in both. To help us understand the differences each student in the class will be running a 15 minute synchronous discussion and a topic on our class website as our asynchronous discussion.  For my presentation I will be taking a look at issues of access and equity in the online classroom. The 15 minute presentation will mostly be based on the work of NACOL in their Issues Brief. You can read more about it here.

I am looking forward to see how this all goes.  It should be fun.

Speaking of fun. I got to go hunting for the first time with my father in law. I got really lucky and got a nice sized doe. We'll be eating well for a while, but the trip out plus thanksgiving family obligations has made me fall a little behind.  Here is to catching up!

Here is the deer!