555 blog 3

Well I have made good use of our time off in the last couple of weeks and I feel like I have the course work under control. I have been crazy busy with our semester car projects at school and I feel like we are way behind, but I think every spring goes like that. This week I tackled the 3.1 culminating experience proposal and I must say that it was very frustrating at the start because I did not have a clue where I was going, but now I am looking forward to 599. I think I have a great proposal and a good project to put into my classwork and classroom. I am going to explore the Auto Repair Reference Center which is an online resource for automotives. It is full of information on vehicle repair and it will be a great tool for my students. I feel like the end is near for us, but yet so far away!

555 blog 2

We are on spring break this week and I am sadly taking the time to do most of my course work. This week I am working on my artifacts and standards for my portfolio. I am very glad that we have used google docs throughout this program as it is very easy to link documents to our portfolio websites. I made an e-portfolio when I was at Stout and I spent a ton of time scanning documents and trying to upload to the portfolio.

This process thus far has gone pretty well. I found the creation of my Google site pretty easy. I have already made all of the pages that I need and I am finishing up with all of the artifacts and reflections to go along with them. I am glad to say that I have found 1 or more artifacts for each class that we have taken thus far and I am hoping to be able to keep up to date as we progress through our last classes. I look forward to finishing this portfolio and this program!

555 blog 1

This week is our first week of Cedo 555. We are looking at online educational portfolio examples. I looked for quite some time online and found a few good examples. I was also able to find some portfolio rubrics to use as an assessment. After reviewing some portfolio examples, I was able to construct my own portfolio rubric. I am confident that as I begin to put my portfolio together that I can reflect what I learned and meet educational standards. I am looking forward to learning how to build a good portfolio and I hope that I have all of the needed artifacts.

550 wk 6

This is our last week of this class and as usual I must say that I am pleasantly surprised by how things went. I have learned a lot about teaching and facilitation online and I have had the opportunity to experience it as well. This course was stressful and the work load was a bit overwhelming at times so I am glad to be done, but I also have appreciated working with Greg and Ken through this process. I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel as we have 0nly three classes to go. I am surprised by how much I have learned during this masters program and how exciting it is to share some of these tools and experiences with my students and colleagues.

550 wk 5

Because of our break this week I am working on weeks 4 and 5 at the same time. This week we are going to be using Google docs to collaborate online and create a presentation that we will use during our next live class period. Our group will discuss online learning and present our slides for a few minutes as a group. This could be a new challenge because now we will facilitate as a group. I have team taught before quite a few times and I teach golf lessons all the time with multiple teachers, but online facilitation with 5 teachers will no doubt be exciting! I am looking forward to using Elluminate again and having the challenge of online group facilitation. I was very leery of this class to begin with, but as I have had to say over and over again throughout this program, I am pleasantly surprised!

550 wk 4

Last week I got the chance to present my first virtual lesson on Elluminate. The first thing that I did is start a timer because I felt that it was hard to keep track of time without being in a real classroom and watching the clock. Then I fiddled around with the moderator tools and actually, surprisingly, did quite well. I was able to facilitate a great discussion for longer than I actually wanted to! After the discussion I used the web tour tool to show some useful videos on youtube. I was impressed by how easy it was to moderate using Elluminate and how comfortable I was during the lesson. I look forward to my next opportunity.

550 wk 3

This week I have prepared for my first online facilitation experience. I am looking forward to using elluminate to facilitate a discussion about how to teach face to face classes online. This topic is personally interesting to me because of my classroom content. I am going to share with my classmates how I have f0und some ways to teach face to face classes online. I am looking forward to sharing with them and also getting some valuable feedback and ideas on how they may look at teaching some of my content online. I will be using the file share and web tour tools to give my discussion a nice twist. I will share my outline with the class right away and then also take them on a web tour to youtube to show some useful videos on automotive content. This is a short exercise, but I am looking forward to the experience.