Having been fired up by all of the "STEM" talks this morning I thought I would push the "technological envelope" and try to insert a picture and perhaps a video clip into my blog. Having the speakers in the morning was a nice change of pace, and while I could not apply the Future City directly to my high school class, I found the concept of city planning and design very interesting for a US history city planning unit when covering the late 19th century. (Of during the 1950's when suburbs were developed).
During the question and answer period at the latter part of class today I was very surprised to hear the number of students that are in an IQ class (50 makes one section?!?!?!?) This is good to remember as my district begins to plan and create our own on-line teaching. As one of the "pioneers" I would want to do everything possible to avoid that situation.
By the way it was my daughter Monica's 8th birthday this week, so I decided to put an earlier photo of her having breakfast in bed on her birthday three years ago.
Don't know about the video....
Good job on uploading the pic! She is very cute. I'm sure that birthday in bed will be one to remember.
ReplyDeleteAs for class, I was very suprised at the number of students in a class also. Fifty seems like a lot of students to keep track of in one session. Especially when you have those who wait until the end to turn in their work. I understand the concept of letting them work at their own pace, but how are they getting ready for the real world by trying to get done all that work in a few days. If they are going to move onto post-secondary school, whether online or brick and mortar, they will have deadlines and have to work on time management skills.
Our school has attempted to resolve this issue of students waiting until the end to turn in work. It is a difficult one and our solutions doesn't work perfectly by any means. We have benchmarks each month that we pretend are set in stone but are flexible. Each month families are "required" to turn in their work, if we find they are not and they don't follow through on promises to turn it in, they get a strike letter from the principal. The letter points out the the legislation (PI-34)regarding proper participation in a virtual school setting and then gives them a warning to the effect that they will be withdrawn from our charter school by the school board if they don't comply. This shakes up most families and they start submitting work. If they do not and continue to ignore the homeroom teachers requests, they are given a second and eventually a third letter. At that point the situation is brought to the BOE and the student is withdrawn. They are then expected to return to the resident brick-and-mortar school or state they are homeschooling.
ReplyDeleteI hope that helps...
p.s. Your daughter picture is very cute! Are those pancake chunks?
I think the rationale for 50 is that many won't turn in work. A sad commentary, indeed, and a potentially disastrous situation if, in fact, most students do the work--but wait until the last minute to submit it.
ReplyDeletePat I couldn't agree more about the class size issue. I also think we need to be very aware of the time it takes to "do" an online class. The textbook has a great chart that compares the amount of time it takes to do an online class compared to a face-to-face class. Another issue that is very concerning to me is the "due date" issue. This could be an absolute nightmare for faculty and truly diminishes the teaching and learning. The more I think about it, if we have strict due dates that doesn't necesarily keep a student from working ahead, but may limit the last minute student. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Mel on the time it takles to do a class issue. I do not have a purchased curriculum, as I think those of you from Elmbrook will not. I have to convert and re-design from an established face2face class. The time it takes to do this, especially at the start, is significant. What does significant mean? In my case, it meant froma year that I spent all of my prep and lunch time for every school day, and time outside of class, simply setting up and maintaing the course. There was no grading factored into this time consumption. If you also add in that evaluating compositions in-line takes more time than on paper, and simply that I am an English teacher and by comparison to some other disciplines always have more out of class work for grading, the time requirement can get frightening. (Even without considering the end of the semester dumping we have been told about by the experienced on-line educators.)
ReplyDelete