Week Nine: The Importance of Planning

Last year was my first year teaching and I lean to that knowledge a lot in this class, but more than that teaching is where I belong, where I have purpose. For a variety of reasons, I am not teaching this year and am back at my office job. Many misconceptions circulated as to why I was back in the office: 1. I’d been let go; 2. I hated teaching; 3. I couldn’t handle the student. All of these are false, I was begged to stay at my school, I miss teaching more than anything I’ve ever missed, and yes, on days I had trouble handling my high schoolers, but on the whole the student respected me well enough to mind me. Ultimately, I needed to get my head on straight to protect myself, not from the students, but from the administration and other teachers. I needed a strong game plan and I had none, especially subjects I’d never even taken classes on.

A student of mine from last year, who is now in school at CU Boulder, informed me this week that he wanted to be a teacher. We had quite a long IM conversation last week about the kind of teacher he wanted to be and the kind of teacher I was. He asked me what I’ll do different next time I teach: hand down, I’ll have a better game plan, and if it isn’t working, it will be changed at quarters or semesters, not when I realize it isn’t working. As I explained to him, sometimes you have the grandest ideas on paper, but when you implement them, things fall apart. Teaching is harder than people think, not because of the students or parents, but purely from the behind-the-scenes planning and the way it consumes your life.

Besides being stuff I’ve needed to get off my chest for a while, how is all this wonderful reflection related to last week’s discussion? Well, we’ve been talking about the hardest part of teaching – the planning; in our case, the design.

In our smaller five people groups, we each picked a quote and commented on each others and at the end we posted a “Last Post.” I’m still trying to figure out how this is different from the “Final Post,” but that is beside the point. Most of our quotes signified important points to remember in planning, but served more as “Duh!” points for me than “Hmm….I never thought of that” points. The first four quotes, including my own, dealt with hooking your audience, the bad reps lectures get when they shouldn’t, not giving students the same information again when they didn’t get it the first time and getting into the content as quickly as possible. The final quote, which wasn’t really a quote at all, had the most “Ah-haness” to it for me.

Eileen posted the page where we could find a chart. At first this frustrated me, because I was trying to respond to everyone’s quotes at work and did not have my book and therefore could not respond to hers. But, as this quote caused me to be most reflective in my own teaching styles, it’s the one that stand out the most.

From Advanced Web-Based Training Strategies by Margaret Driscoll and Saul Carliner, Page 284:

Although Eileen and I continued to have a discussion about this after her last post, I felt my first remarks to her were my most important of the week:

“I think I've always been on the side of getting my student's to think for themselves. Many times I've felt lazy as a teacher for doing this, but I'm learning more and more that students get more when they make the meaning themselves and are reinforced with a yes that's right or a follow-up leading question, than when they are handed the answer.”

Eileen stated she thought this was interesting, I don’t quite know what that means, but today as I sat down to write this blog I began to think. The reason I feel lazy is because I’m on the passive side of the chart. I’m waiting for the descriptive summary, but I’m not actively engaged in it. This might be why most of my group seems to be unable to let the student create the summaries, if they do that, not only do they lose control, but they also are less active in the teaching and therefore don’t feel like successful.

Week Eight: Practice

I’ve read a few other classmates blogs….in a way I feel I’m intruding on others private thoughts. And then I wonder, is anyone besides Dave reading my blogs? Can I make these blogs less formal than they’ve been? I mean, I do like to write, but I’ve always been short and concise with “school” work. In my perusal of others’ blogs, I’ve noticed a few posting photos and not that the photo has anything to do with the Discussion, but I find I’m a visual person and I like that small little addition.

So today I add a photo. I took it a few weeks ago, but I took a long walk today and the signs of fall are everywhere. The crinkling of the leaves, the vivid colors, the crisp air….oh, I do love fall. :-)

Onward to the discussion: Last week we were still divided into our smaller groups, I think there might be three, but we had two different discussions to participate in. My intention was to participate in both, but I found myself wanting to practice responses to students or conference participants and so I did, but between the six questions and the other discussion, the group discussion in the practice section was sparse and I felt myself wondering if I misread the directions or if the other in the group misread the directions, because we didn’t seem to be responding in the same way. Most of the other group members responded to the question…..I felt very strongly that we weren’t to respond to the question, but to redirect the “student” that had responded or rephrase the question, so that’s what I did.

I think my most valuable contribution was:

This question has bothered me all week. I'm very frustrated with the student response because it is very obvious that it does not answer the question, but I thought the questions was very straight forward and didn't leave room for this sort of response, so I don't know how to reword it and to the student I just want to say....did you read the directions? Start again, which is not encouraging at all and will just cause the student to be frustrated and give up. Help anyone?

Unfortunately, no one in my group wanted to discuss this with me, but I thought I was asking a very valuable question. Maybe everyone felt the same way I did and couldn't shed any light on it either. Thankfully, Joni was very active in our "discussion" this week. Joni’s insight into the fact that sometimes we have to encourage students and “remind them of the directions” was very helpful. Sometimes when I feel my direction can not be improved and still the student isn’t responding correctly, I get frustrated and feel like I’ve failed. It was good to hear that sometimes, all we can do is remind them, that it isn’t always MY fault, there are a variety of reasons why they might have answered incorrectly and in the online environment isn’t probably that the rushed through reading the directions.

Week Seven: Informal Learning

The discussion this week was a little bit different. For the first half of the week, we responded to five questions. Some of these questions didn’t seem to have anything to do with our class, for example: What do you know more about than Joni and Dave? It was enjoyable to read through the answers and learn more about my classmates. At the beginning of the semester I was overwhelmed with everyone’s names, I couldn’t keep anyone straight. I guess when you are in a class you have a visual and sounds to help you know who is who. Anyway, everyone’s personalities are coming out in the discussions now and it isn’t as difficult for me to follow conversations.

After we answered these questions we went back to our group to discuss what we learned about informal learning from questions. My most important contribution came in my first post, which was also the group’s first post. In it I stated:

“At the very base, these are things we find interesting and important. Most of the time we educate ourselves in these areas and we have quite a few similarities, so there is probably and audience out there looking for self-paced course.”

I think this was a good start to our discussion because it was a very broad overview and gave everyone a place to leave from. Other ideas that were discussed include: the necessity for informal learning to be relaxed, intriguing, self-directed and that the internet is a perfect place for this type of thing. I mean, if we really think about it, how many arguments are solved everyday, by people searching for the answer to a question online? I’m sure quite I few. Which just shows the power of informal learning.

Week Five: Naturally Social

This week we had three discussion sections under our group, but no one participated in the Expert Q & A. I wonder why that is. I participated in the other two, but was most intrigued and interested in the first. The first discussion, “Where’s the ‘social’ in self-paced instruction?,” really got me to thinking about what is social and how we can and should incorporate it into eLearning.

Our group stated out with a debate on if our learning experience stories were self-paced and what does self-paced mean. Even after this discussion, I believe if a student or learner is choosing there own deadlines and timing to work on the learning, then it is self-paced, although not all the rest of the group agreed, I think we could see each other’s points.

Since I was most familiar with my own story and I feel it is 100% self-paced, I wanted to get it out there and I it was my best contribution to the group.

"There is no schedule for us. And I do feel a lot of our learning experiences fit this…yes, there were goals of when it was to be don, but those time-constraints were chosen by the learner, no a teacher.”

This statement explained the thinking of our learning experiences being self-paced and gave Joni an opportunity to re-direct the conversation back to social. (Which I did notice Joni was more involved with our discussion this week and asked more questions to direct where we were going, but this made for a more involved discussion.)

We discussed if social can be a simulation of social or if it has to be true, human-human interaction. I think the majority of the people discussing eventually felt that as long as the person is having a social dialogue (whether that be on paper, computer, with themselves or others) it is social.

Phillip ended our conversation with what I thought was the best point of anyone. In a nut shell he said, we shouldn’t get too wrapped up in incorporating social interaction because most of the time it will happen naturally.

This really hit home for me because in all my schooling, teachers have tried to force me to be social. When it is forced I tend to resist and feel uncomfortable and remember more how I didn’t like the experience, than what I was actually learning. On the other hand, two subjects that I never thought I would enjoy – Nutrition (classroom based) and Meteorology (online based) – I found that my social interactions came from being excited about the content, being able to apply it to my life and then I shared it all the time with my family and friends. This was a positive social experience and had little do to with the instructor forcing it upon me.

Week Four: Philosophy vs. Theory

For our week four discussion we were given three loaded questions to answer:

• What is the connection between philosophy (including your own, as determined via the PAEI), theory, and our common values (derived over the last three weeks)?
• Which philosophical and theoretical position(s) best supports our common values? How?
• And, why should we care? In honor of Ms. Tina Turner, what’s philosophy got to do with the design of eLearning experiences?

The discussion for the week started off slow. If everyone else was like me, they went back everyday, reread the questions and thought some more about it before posting. We all stated our PAEI scores and discussed how our common values relate to philosophy. Some of us believe that our values create our philosophies, where others think that philosophies create our values. I almost believe it's a, which comes first, the chicken or the egg? type question. They are very inter-related. A few of us tried to state which philosophies our values fell into, but there was never a consensus and in fact, all five philosophies were named at one point.

My best contribution to the group was:

"I don't know if this answers the question, but last year in APS, we were told of this new "workshop" model for teaching English. Most of the teachers complain about it. It's not really teaching and anything else you can think of. In reading these few chapters I've decided that APS has changed there philosophy, while most of the teacher haven't and this is creating problems. If we don't recognize what our philosophies are and how those relate to the philosophies of companies or school districts we may work for, we may just be creating more headaches for ourselves. If we know the similarities and differences, we can kinda meld them together when needed to fit everyone’s needs. I think APS would have less resistance if they approached teachers about philosophies and the differences and even made them take the PAEI, then to just say do it."

I believe this was my most effective contribution, because it was the most concrete response to the “Why should we care?” question and based on the comments and discussion after, I think it was more stimulating than some of the others’ “Why we should care?” answers.

I think some of the most valuable parts of the discussion stemmed from questions brought up from others:

• What is the difference between philosophy and theory?
• How philosophies effect our teaching? Is it possible to teach using someone else’s philosophy?
• Can philosophies be flexible?
• How is technology changing education?

These were the main points in our discussion. I’d never thought about the difference between philosophy and theory, but when it was asked I realized most of us had similar ideas, but had just as had a time putting it into words. Essentially, philosophies are your beliefs that lead to which theory (practice) you will use.

Another key point, was the discussion of the changing philosophies or flexible philosophies. Many good points were made in this context and we all had a variety of opinions on this one. From no, your philosophy can not change, to it changes with every situation. I think when it comes down to it, there are aspects of our philosophies that are steadfast and will not change, but there are other parts that if we are to be effective need to change (or at least we need to be open-minded) to fit the situation.

I’ve held off on writing this blog, as this was a big discussion for me. I really see the value of philosophies and that we can have the same common value, and different philosophies to get there. I really wish I’d had this philosophy discussion before I taught last year, but then again, maybe I wasn’t in the right place and now this means something to me and last year it wouldn’t have. I’ve combated my teaching friends with philosophy discussions this week, trying to explain everything I’ve gotten from this discussion, but it’s not the lightest subject matter. :-)

About this Blog

This is my blog about eLearning. It was developed in the Fall of 2007 for IT 5660:Designing and Teaching in eLearning Environments. This is the first class in my master's program at the University of Colorado at Denver.

I love to blog, but this is my first blog with a specific, and academic, purpose. It is a bit of a struggle for me to be more formal, but it will be good.