Final Blog Post - Virtual Schooling and 21f

The video taught me a great deal about virtual schooling in regard to Michigan and made me think about how other states are prepared or not for virtual schooling. I didn’t realize Michigan had put that much effort into virtual schooling. I think it’s wonderful that the governor has made it a priority for Michigan. You asked about the benefits and pitfalls of virtual schooling; first let me say that the benefits far outweigh the problems that may occur. One major advantage of virtual schooling is convenience. Online learning allows students to work at their own pace and not have to be restricted by time as with traditional schooling. The fact that students can learn and take classes from anywhere around the world from the convenience of their own homes is a major advantage. Another major advantage is the flexibility of online learning; students are not only allowed to learn in an environment that they feel comfortable with i.e. at home or in the library but they avoid problems such as bullying and violence that many traditional schools are dealing with now. One other advantage we have to consider is that virtual learning can be geared toward the learner and they can obtain special help as needed, especially for those special need and “problem” children. Another aspect of the flexibility is that students and parents can have a choice in learning and teaching methods, as mentioned in the scenarios. Some of the disadvantages are that in order to do online learning students must have time management skills, self-discipline and adequate knowledge of and access to technology. Also school districts and educators must be equipped to have these changes across the board.

Regarding the scenarios and whether schools are equipped to handle these cases; I would say if we looked at schools collectively, whether nationally on even on the state level the answer would be no. That’s not to say that on some level individual schools, teachers, students or districts cannot handle these scenarios and do so rapidly. However rapidly is relative, I don’t think that some of these cases would be able to be resolved by next fall. But again that depends on the scenario, for example if you look at the scenario with the child with leukemia I believe there are programs in place already that would allow him/her to graduate on time. Or if you look at the scenario of the child in a rural district that wants to take calculus, I think that there are things in place for that to happen as well. Another example that can be resolved in somewhat of a simple way is the scenario of the parents who don’t want Mr. Siko teaching their youngest son because their first son hated him; this would be as simple to allowing the child to take a virtual class. I don’t think it can or should be prevented. Parents should have a say on how their children are taught and by whom, whether it seems logical or not. Of course this should be done within certain parameters in order to keep some type of structure in the school district, but it definitely should be permitted.

In regard to the scenario where the child came from a cyber-school and his scores are subpar, this is something that cannot be controlled and isn’t exclusive to cyber schools, it would be the same if a child came from another state, there is no way to control this and therefor isn’t a factor for virtual learning. The last scenario regarding the teacher who is asked to be a facilitator for online teachers with no additional time; this would pose a problem, as many teachers barely have time for the students that they currently have. I think schools should implement a virtual facilitator per district as to not place additional burdens on individual teachers. This is a scenario that I believe schools are not currently equipped to handle and will not be able to in the immediate future.

I don’t teach at a k-12 school so I do not know how they are handling it, however at the college where I teach, they have a department that focuses solely on virtual schooling, which I believe needs to happen in the K-12 school environment.

 

Virtual Schooling-Myths (blog 2)

            The ‘myths about virtual schools’ article was very interesting, it did have a few myths on there that I am guilty of believing. However none of the things that I posted in blog post one was on there. It proved that some of the points that I made in blog post one were accurate. The myth about online courses are for gifted and talented students was touched on in blog one. I hear many people saying that online classes are very difficult and most people cannot take them; that they require a lot of discipline and additional skills, mainly technology skills. The article listed that as a myth, arguing that online learning is for everyone and that often time the opposite is true. In many cases online learning is used to help special needs students and as somewhat as a reform or alternative for “difficult” students. Based on this article, our readings and various research I can see that this statement is very true. It gave me a moment of clarity. Though I didn’t necessarily believe that online learning was for the gifted, I didn’t think of it in terms of it being useful to help special needs students. That fact alone is very inspiring and gave me a completely new insight and level of respect for online learning.

Another myth that I found interesting was the ease factor, the fact that online learning and teaching was easier than traditional learning and teaching. I know firsthand that the learning part is not true. I have had experience in both traditional and online learning, somewhat of a blending learning and I have found online learning to be just as difficult and/or challenging as traditional learning. The level of difficulty for online learning depends greatly on the class and instructor, however across the board online learning is much more time consuming. I have to admit that I did think online teaching was a bit easier than traditional. However as I have looked into becoming an online teacher I see that this myth is far from true. It takes just as much time and effort to teach online as it does to teach traditionally. It is still a goal of mine though. One of the biggest obstacles I’ve found in trying to teach online is where to start, how do people find online jobs? I know in many cases schools require some type of certification but each schools seem to have their own criteria and/or testing. Does anyone have any advice on where I should start with an online teaching career?

Virtual Schooling

Virtual schooling or cyber schooling is when someone receives a form of education on the internet rather than a physical location. The schooling can take place anywhere as long as the student has access to the internet; whether by mobile device, laptop, tablet or personal computer. It is usually done by a Learning Management System (Blackboard, Angel, Moodle etc.) which is a system by which students can receive assignments, instruction, documents, testing and reporting of their courses. Pretty much anything that can be handed to a student in a classroom can be given to a student by means of a LMS system.

As stated previously virtual schools can be done anywhere, even if the school is based in another state. Virtual schooling is done by any student and can offer programs and curriculum for all grade and all courses levels. My experience with virtual schooling is mostly with the college level. I’ve taken many classes virtually at Wayne State and even have obtained an entire graduate certificate online using virtual schooling.  In regard to K-12 and virtual schooling I still believe that it is done less in K-12 as oppose to the college level, however that I believe will soon change as well. In the last few years many programs have developed for virtual schooling for K-12. And even though K-12 may use virtual schooling less it is used frequently in education. It may not be at a point where most K-12 does their full curriculums virtually but for many students some portions of their education will be taught virtually.

Judging the Quality of Wikis and Non-vetted Sites

My profession has had a very public and direct opinion about Wikipedia.  Librarians, especially reference and academic librarians have been openly opposed to Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s mission seems to be totally incompatible with that of librarians; as the goal of a librarian is to evaluate the quality of resources, and many question Wikipedia’s quality. The reason for this is mainly due to the credibility of Wikipedia, or lack thereof. Two main things that librarians have a problem with, concerning Wikipedia are: the massive amount of errors on the site, both grammatical and factual. The second reason is that with Wikipedia anyone can contribute to it by adding or removing anything that they want, which colors our judgment of the site. There’s absolutely nothing stopping a person from adding false information or deleting legitimate information from the site which that alone makes it unreliable.  When I teach my classes and do library orientations I strongly discourage students from using the site as a reference and will not accept it as a legitimate source. Librarians consider ourselves as experts in regard to evaluating and recommending top notch scholarly resources. We spend a lot of time and money searching for the best scholarly articles and databases written by scholars and academic leaders, which for the most part does not seem to include Wikipedia. And with the thousands of articles and databases that schools provide, especially colleges it seems reckless to use a source such as Wikipedia.  That’s not to say that every library resource has unimpeachable reliability, but the sources that we pick has been evaluated and generally has the seal of approval, meaning that the book is useful and good in some regard.

With all that being said, all librarians are not as skeptical of Wikipedia as they once were. Since the site was launched in 2001 it has made some major improvements, which greatly increased its credibility and reliability. The fact that Wikipedia is a fixture of the internet now and is said to be in the top ten of the most popular websites on the internet forces me, and librarians in general to give the site a closer glance and perhaps see what we can do as a profession to make it more accurate for our students. Also Wikipedia has made major efforts to make the site more credible. It has implemented many defense mechanisms specifically designed to prevent people from interfering with the sites credibility. One of the other good things about Wikipedia is their use of crowdsourcing; which is their use of gathering information from anyone all over the world. However as of now I and most librarians still see Wikipedia as an unreliable source, mainly because we are skeptical of the crowd’s wisdom whom are providing this information.

Building and Refining my PLN

Feedly/RSS

 

Blog name: Bright ideas


Blog address: http://slav.global2.vic.edu.au/2013/11/29/school-library-blog-making-connections/#.UwehC9GYaB0

I chose Bright ideas blog because it is more than just a blog of opinions. Its entire goal is to encourage teacher librarians and educators to use tools and share them with one another. It focuses on networking on a larger scale than simply having a local connection. It encourages a global scale of networking so that teachers, librarians and educational administrators can share information with one another.

The reason that this blog caught my attention is because it has many links and webinars¸ some of which focuses on Web 2.0 and wikis, which hit home because those are the very things that we are talking about in class. Mostly I love that the name of the blog “bright ideas” is simple and straight forward, the whole premise is that people share their bright ideas with one another to further benefit their students.

Blog name: Stephen’s Lighthouse

Blog address: http://stephenslighthouse.com/2013/12/17/free-online-learning-tool-encourages-parent-engagement-in-school-libraries/

I chose Stephen’s Lighthouse blog because it was a blog created by a librarian and a consultant who blogs about strategies to help librarians and educators to use different strategies, guided direction, marketing and technology all in collaboration to all of its users.

One of the reasons that this blog stands out is because it focuses on parent engagement and how it relates to student achievement. It gives tutorials and training to help parents engage with students to improve student scores. The site helps parents to support their children’s libraries by encouraging reading and information literacy. It gives ideas about literacy events which includes lunchtime book clubs and family reading.

Blog name: Youth Service Corner

Blog address: http://www.youthservicescorner.com/

I chose Youth Services Corner blog because it is a specific resource for teens and librarians and whoever works with them. It focuses on books, pop culture, websites and other things that might interest teens and at the same time helps them learn.

What made this blog stand out to me are the recurring themes of the blog such as (1) a library spotlight that highlights library teen webpages, teen spaces from around the country. (2) Reviews of different movies, TV shows, websites and music that may be of interest to teens. (3) Program ideas for libraries. (4) Links of the week, which focuses on news articles and blogs for that week that might interest teens. (5) Books to Movies, a summary of movies that were based on books.  I like all of these themes because it brings what young people are doing every day to the library and helps the two collaborate.

Twitter

Expert/Organization: @TheLitPlatform

A Little about them: The Literary Platform is an online magazine that focuses on the collaboration between books and technology. They work with schools exploring the impact of technology and books.

Expert/Organization: @roseholck

A Little about them: An author, librarian, and technology teacher who can also change a tire and install a kitchen sink.

 

Expert/Organization: @aasl

A Little about them: The American Association of School Librarians is a community of librarians and educators who collaborate for social and professional networking.

 

Expert/Organization: @ldfredrickson

A Little about them: Linda Fredrickson is a school librarian who provides information via twitter such as: free technology tools, links, videos and other information to teachers and librarians.

 

Expert/Organization: @DPS_librarian

A Little about them: Sudi Stodola is a Teacher-Librarian in Denver Public Schools who focuses on Educational technology and blended learning. She refers to it as-THE LIBRARY IS MY CLASSROOM.

 

Paragraph Reflection

I have never really used twitter, actually before this class I didn’t even have a twitter account. However now that I have one I’ve able to follow people that I am most interested in. Included in that are President Obama, Oprah, various reality stars and some classmates. I haven’t used it much for educational purposes as of yet but the ability to use it is great, and as I get more involved in the process I will use it more often, specifically for educational purposes. I have used the feedly to follow and read various blogs that I’m interested in, some educational and some for recreation such as cooking recipes. I have gravitated more toward feedly, it allows me to read opinions and information about anything that I follow, which is why I enjoy it so much.

Week 4-SAMR Model

Week 4-SAMR Model

I am a librarian but have instructional classes at a local community college. My area of focus is generally library instruction, meaning teaching students how to use the resources of the library to help them throughout their academic career. I also teach specialized classes dealing with research, technology basics and advancement, citation, and various other things. I try as often as possible to implement various forms of technology into my instruction. Using the SAMR model listed below are a few things that I've already done with students and many things that I now plan to do in the near future.

Substitution: When dealing on the substitution level, I could and have used eBooks to have reading groups and/or books clubs. In this case students are using the new technology of eBooks to replace paper books. Another example is that I could use Google Docs to replace Microsoft Word.

Augmentation: On this level of Augmentation, still dealing with eBooks, the basic functions of eBooks can be used such as Read to Me and dictionary definition. And when using Augmentation as it relates to Google docs, instead of writing a document and saving it in order to share it with others, with Google Docs students can use auto saving, auto syncing, and auto sharing in the cloud.

Modification: On this level I’ve tried using the camera function in order for students to be able to record readings. On this level as it relates to Google Docs students can use the commenting service to do things like collaborate and share feedback on a task..

 

Redefinition: On the last level students can use iBooks Author to create media rich ePub books. And as far as this level as it relates to Google Docs students can use shared Google documents for notetaking either during the sessions or to use in their  regular classrooms, this is especially good for students as a review for exams.

 

Generation Variances

    
     I am a part of the Millennial Generation....and proud of it! According to the readings my generation is said to be "tech-savvy, team-oriented, optimistic with high expectations. I agree with most of it, however the optimistic part somewhat depends on where we fall in our recent economic crisis. Many people that I graduated college with prior to the crisis were very excited and optimistic. However we are amongst those that suffered from lay-offs; as many of us were low on the seniority list, so much of that optimism waned because we were forced to reinvent ourselves in terms of our careers.
     I instruct those that are members of the generation edge. It's somewhat difficult to completely agree with the readings and videos because one thing about this generation is that their characteristics are so broad. You have the group that people say are lazy, don't want to work or go to school, have no respect for their elders and are responsible for a lot of crime. Unfortunately as hard as it is to admit some of this is true. However generation edge is also said to be amongst those who will make the most impact on our society. I tend to lead on the side of them having a great impact. This generation is going to school and having to work full-time and many have children to raise. And in the midst of that facing the fact that their education may not get them a job when they graduate. Not to mention the fact that they will end of paying for a war that they had not decision on.
     One thing that I found interesting and that I totally agree with is that generation edgers were born into the digital age. That's all that they know which makes the way that they learn different than with previous generations. Due to this fact one of the writers asked the question as to whether we as instructors have to change the way that we teach or if our students have to change the way that they learn. I believe that the first is true, instructors have to change the way that they teach. It's not acceptable today to have a teacher who can't comprehend or teach with technology involved. I've always been on the mentality to "meet students where they are" meaning that if that's how they learn than that is the way that we must teach. We have to learn about technology and social media and implement that into our lessons. However with that said I believe that some of the traditional ways have to be taught to the generation edgers. They should spend a little less time on social media that doesn't pertain to learning and more time creating good study habits. They must also understand that the easy and "right now" way is not always the best method to learn.
     Some of the readings and videos were a little daunting, it gave a very bleak account on what's to come for generation edge. So much so that it almost gave the impression that they should not even attend school. Though many aspects of the readings were true, I believe that those in generation edge will have to find career alternatives and not be able to focus solely on traditional ways to work.