I was turned off by the concept of "teacher-proofing" virtual courses. I don't see how taking creative input and course guidance out of the hands of teachers positively affects the course. Even in a recent thought exercise where I had actors teaching courses, they still could respond to their audience and potentially change their performance based on how things are evolving. Being able to inject class and even student-relevant information, context, and application into courses is important to me.
I thought it was interesting that the near elimination of classroom management provides teachers with more time to connect with their students. Eliminate having to lord over the room and that time can be better used. But once again, we are dealing with motivated students. How much classroom management issues would there be with a room full of highly motivated students?
Both HVLN's E-school and Delta Cyber School provided teachers with courses in the Course Management package of choice, but I had a hard time finding out how else the teachers were trained for the online environment. If the bulk of time needed to train teachers is concentrated on learning technology, does that mean that younger, more technology adept, online teachers will make up the majority? In addition to generalized technology literacy, I am talking about usage of the Course Management packages themselves. I am sure there are young people at TC right now that can build on their prior usage in high school, college, and grad school and learn the producer side of the Course Management systems over lunch.
What will this mean to have younger teachers potentially with little or no f2f experience? I would like to see current demographic information on online teachers beyond those of the "Going Virtual" sample. Actual ages are of interest to me because I can get a sense of exposure to technology.
I ran across the growth of home schoolers who take advantage of online schooling. This segment intrigues me more and more because of my myopic view of what and who home schoolers were.
I didn't see teacher development to the extent demonstrated by the Louisiana Virtual School. It seemed like my schools were all one phase programs - learn the software and you are off the the races. I did like the LVS's phases and their coverage.
I love the concept of teachers helping other teachers to excel and grow in the online environment. I find it funny that much is being made of this since it seems like the only way to go! I guess it is being mentioned because the schools should make this intercommunication as fluid as possible.
I didn't like what seemed like a push to get kids to take virtual courses before graduating. I love love love technology, but I am not one of those people who believes in technology just for technology's sake. If there isn't a need, don't use it. The shift to required courses may reduce the number of "motivated students" and expose a very different side of online schooling. I don't think f2f is going anywhere anytime soon, so students should take courses in the format that is most beneficial to them.
As with the VS NACOL survey, I found that the teacher survey was a lot of common sense mixed with oddity.
"Facilitates and monitors appropriate interaction among students."
This was interesting because students can always have out-of-band conversations. Is it the responsibility of the teacher to keep conversations through proper channels?
"Demonstrates the ability to effectively use word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation software."
This is always tricky because, which package you use can impact how well these skills come across. I have difficulty... mostly frustration.... with Google Docs. Things that I do easily in Excel aren't as easy for me to do in Docs. I wouldn't want to be penalized because of my choice of package. I would almost abstract this a bit to capture the skills and not project it onto actual software.
"Assesses each student’s background and content knowledge and uses these data to plan instruction."
I think this is great, but how individualized can these classes be? I have yet to see an example of an individualized course at either of my schools. I can think of how it works, but I haven't seen one yet. Speaking to my earlier point, I fear that "teacher-proofing" will creep in as more and more schools grow reliant on external content making this point hard to satisfy.... and not because of the teacher.
"Meets the state’s professional teaching standards or has academic credentials in the field in which he or she is teaching."
Does this open the door to people in industry teaching? Very interesting and up my alley because none of the people that I want to volunteer will jump through hoops to get state certification or give up hours to take other forms of standardized tests when they have demonstrated their subject knowledge through work and prior academics.
On the matter of Teacher ratios, I was disappointed that the information was not more readily available. Class and school stats like these should be upfront and center on all of these sites. I also had a hard time with scale. I didn't really know if my values were high or low because I didn't have a good reference point. What are we comparing it against? F2F? Other online programs? Does that metric even make sense? The funny thing is that I wouldn't care how many students were being served if my experience is a good one. All of these schools should take advantage of economies of scale! Technology can help increase the ratio in a non-destructive manner.
I didn't understand the social reform component of the TPI. It felt like they threw it in as a counter weight to other values. Are there many people in the social reform camp? It felt like the social change that they were promoting had a specific trajectory.
Random chuckle: When I do my reading, I put all of my files in a single folder, identify them by their filenames for note taking, and then chug through them. I had to laugh how midway through "Chap10.pdf", I thought the author's definitions and tone sounded very much like that of Prof. Lowes. Ha! In a paper environment, I would refer to the printout by the author. In an electronic setting, I refer to the reading by its filename. I wonder if people print out notes or do electronic reading?
I know Apple and Adobe are not on the greatest of terms right now, but I am surprised that they did not demonstrate and play up a dedicated Apple PDF viewer (like preview) for the iPad. It can display pdf's emailed to the device, so why not make a dedicated viewer especially since files can now be moved over USB directly to the device?
Also, PDF's are wonderful, but true PDF's are even better. I really like to be able to copy and paste, highlight, and annotate directly in my documents. Are there any studies that compare the effectiveness of online note taking with written note taking? I would think that the process of writing out notes in my own words would be more involved, active, and beneficial for retention? I will have to check on this...
Another good week!
I have a tone??? I never knew that!
ReplyDeleteYour great post has caused me to think quite a bit...
ReplyDeleteI agree that teachers separated from the course design is a bad combination. As part of teacher evaluations, they should be required to work with the designers (and students) to make the courses better.
Online classes will have to wrestle with students who are not highly motivated. Today, however, the majority of online courses have self-motivated students. Less time on classroom management frees teachers to collaborate and refine their skills.
I worry a little when you say that “HVLN's E-school and Delta Cyber School provided teachers with courses in the Course Management package of choice”. It seems like online courses are far from standardized, so my worry is that the “portable” courses maybe not be that great.
I am a HUGE proponent of teachers developing online connections with other teachers (aka Personal Learning Community). The ease at which I can find people, ask questions, and participate in discussion has fueled my inquisitiveness. I had questions about the TPI quiz. I contacted the author via e-mail and we have had a few exchanges within 24 hours.
I know that you thought the NACOL survey was “common sense”. Around the same time I was reading that document, I was filling out my own evaluation at my school. I found it sad that my own evaluation didn’t have many of these “common sense” items that addresses direct teaching ability and efforts to improve.
I don’t think it is the responsibility of the teacher to keep conversations through proper channels any more than I try and monitor everything that my students write with a pen.
Huge shout out to your comment about software, “I would almost abstract this a bit to capture the skills and not project it onto actual software”. This is a huge pitfall. In a similar vein, teachers sometimes lose sight of the skills (abstract) they teach and talk about the content (concrete).
"Assesses each student’s background and content knowledge and uses these data to plan instruction." Online web2.0 tools make this easier than ever before.
"Meets the state’s professional teaching standards or has academic credentials in the field in which he or she is teaching." This is great. I am from industry and I believe one way to improve education is to in source more experts. I don’t think that certification has been a significant driver for better education. It’s existence only keeps important resources at bay.
“I didn't understand the social reform component of the TPI.” I feel your pain. In theory, part of education is skill build and teaching citizenship. At the private school where I teach, we spend time on non-academic skills in an “advisory” class. This was always a minority of time (<5%) and it gets squeezed teach year. My vision of social skills is to teach kids some real world legal and financial Literacies.
I find electronic reading very limited because I like to annotate the paper or type notes/concept map while I read the paper. I’ll be a paper lover until screens get much bigger and I can have a few of them.
Apple considers PDF files to be yesterday’s markup language and wants the iPad to be a platform for next generation rich and interactive content.