Module 1 Reflections

I felt excited to be starting a new course that will help me in my work as an online teacher! The interview was very interesting. I love meeting new people! Learning online gives us the opportunity to work with such a diverse population with a wealth of experience. I am looking forward to working with these incredibly talented, gracious people.

I got my feet wet with the wiki, a tool with lots of potential for online learning. Although I had significant technical trouble with this particularly wiki, I can see where it would be a tool that students would really enjoy and learn from, as long as it works glitch-free. The Moodle wiki that I have used seems more student-friendly. I need to experiment with different wiki sites.

The McLoughlin/Luca article on assessment (Assessment methodologies in transition: Changing practices in web-based learning) was a great place to start. In my position teaching younger students, I feel an important part of what I do involves information literacy. As the paradigm shifts in this information age, students need to have research skills. They need to be able to find the information they need quickly, and they need to learn to evaluate the validity of the information they find, discerning fact from fiction. Even in young students, I need to create a learning environment that encourages deep learning. According to this article, this is accomplished by "enabling learners to take an active role in learning by initiating, managing, monitoring, reflecting and evaluating learning tasks and processes." Although young learners might not be entirely ready for all of this, some of these tasks are appropriate. Web tools can be used for authentic assessment and inspire more learning. I need to continually add these new tools to my strategies in my online instruction. But to do that, I want to know the best practices for using these tools with K-12 students. I am looking forward to learning more about authentic assessment and online learning.