Brick and Mortar vs Online

I saw a YouTube video that was really thought-provoking. It was about the large lecture-style auditorium as a college classroom. I remember dropping my first college class that was hosted in an auditorium so big that it must have held 75 students. That class did not fit my learning style. Today, online learning is best for me. Taking classes online enabled me to follow the syllabus, look ahead, and see the online rubrics. I always had a good understanding of the class expectations and could refer back to them at any time. The online schedule was helpful for keeping me on track. The scoring rubrics helped me get an "A" in every class. The rubrics served as a checklist for my work. When will more educators realize that students today will not respond to that style of teaching?

Virtual Environments

I'm looking forward to attending a special interest group webinar at the ISTE Island tonight.  My avatar is dressed in rockstar wardrobe and ready to go!  The series of webinars are held in Second Life for visitors that are attending the ISTE convention in Denver next month.  I'll finish this post later....

The virtual webinar in the ISTE "auditorium" was interesting.  My thoughts are this...There is not a lot of usage of virtual grids for high school classrooms yet.  Remember when not too many people had an email address?  Is there going to be a sudden boom, an explosion, of virtual, second life-type classes?  If nothing else, today's educator needs to be prepared, have created an avatar, and have "tried out second life", so to speak. 

My Second Life experience has been thrilling, to say the least.  I can't wait to attend another ISTE virtual forum tonight - one for media specialists like myself.  Knowing how I feel about going into Second Life makes me realize how powerful a tool this virtual environment can be for students.  I'm not even a digital native and I can't wait to go into the grid.  Just think how motivated a student will be to study in a second life environment.  Safe, secure virtual environments are needed.

Study Island Regents

It's Regents Prep time in New York State.  Yesterday I trained seven teachers on the use of Study Island as an online assessment preparation program to prepare high school students for the end of the year Regents exams.  The questions that teachers have never cease to amaze me.  They always come up with something new to try and stump me.  Fortunately, there is live support at Study Island and I can use that chat messaging system right while I'm teaching.  I know the Study Island website very well, however, it is created by such a progressive company that the website and program is constantly changing.....improving, enhancing, adding.
Questions that the teachers had surrounded accumulative scoring for students, use of data to inform instruction, use of the new, live view, and creating classes and assignments in general.

I have made note of the teacher questions and will email each, inviting them to meet me, separately, in an Adobe room for follow-up, individual assistance. My greatest frustration in teaching in the districts occurs when there is not enough time allocated.  The curriculum directors set the time...and 45 minutes is not enough time to prepare a teacher to use Study Island or any other web program. By the time the teachers get logged in (and there are always problems with that - or they haven't been issued a username and password) there is very little time to do the program justice.  Note to myself: remember not to trust the district leaders to send out the usernames and passwords to the teachers prior to the training.  Find a way to have my digital team do it so the teachers will be ready on the day of the training.

Mobile Device War

This link to Rob DeLorenzo's Education and Mobile Devices Blog shares light on an interesting theme....Apple vs Microsoft vs Google.  I tend to agree that small, hand-held devices will rule in the future.  The Ipad is just a preview to how desktop computers will be obsolete.  I want to buy an Ipad but will wait until a laptop "device" can do more and download other types of apps, not just Apple apps.  I want a device, the size of an Ipad, that will do more across the board, not just limited to Apple products.  Thanks to Don for the link!