the virtual art room...hmmm

I have to admit, I am a little bit on the fence with teaching art completely online. I know it could be done, but I still believe there are things students just need to "be there" for. Sure I could create a video for all my demonstrations (I already have over half of them taped already!) and put them on a wiki, webpage or virtual class hub. I could do live web chats with my students to "watch" them draw, paint, sculpt, but what about those times I just need to be there. For instance, when I am teaching value drawing, the students definitely benefit from hand over hand instruction when they are struggling. How could I do this via the internet? What about when i help them correct their pressure for painting, drawing, carving, and throwing on a potters wheel. I NEED to know how hard or soft they are pushing in order to give the correct, specific and timely feedback they need in order to learn. I do think there are a number of ways art can be taught online and in fact it would probably be a better learning environment for everyone involve (more independence, less classroom distractions, less peer pressure, etc), but still feels like not all art could be taught this way.

With that said, I am look forward to trying to make my room more of a blended learning environment. If I can begin to do this more frequently and it becomes part of my pedagogy, perhaps I will one day be able to see teaching art (ALL ART) online!

Week 3...

So I have to admit that I didn't realize how difficult it was to facilitate an online presentation or class. There is so much to prepare for that it can become quite overwhelming.

I am really happy to have been challenged to create a synchronous and asynchronous discussion for this week because it has taught me so much! I feel like a really am beginning to understand elluminate more from an educators perspective and less from a learners perspective. I also feel like I am growing even more comfortable with doing the facilitating. I am not "afraid" to speak in large groups, but did have an eye opening experience trying to create the synchronous presentation. I found that preparing an online discussion for a class is very demanding. I have to have everything ready to go and also have back up ideas for extra time and student questions. Although these challenges face us in the traditional face to face classroom too, I have learned how to do this without even thinking about it in my classroom. For instance, I have visual aids I can grab out of a cabinet or I can do a live demonstration (remember I'm an art teacher...this is a daily routine). I really don't have these luxuries online and have to learn new ones.

So, my biggest "ah ha"moment was that no matter how well you know your content you also have to know the platform for presenting just as well. I definitely need to continue learning online teaching strategies!

something new from week 2!!

The biggest thing I learned this week was when you hve online classes with group work, weather can shut things down pretty quick!! Our group ran into some weather related issues (severe weather on Sunday) but dont worry everything turned out okay.

This made me think about how technology has its pros and cons. For instance, this situation was a first a con. We couldn't all meet when we wanted to because the storm was reaching us all at different times, but we could quickly solve the problem and do some asynchronous work until we could all collaborate together again. So, although the storm hindered us initially, being able to collaborate both synchronously and asynchronously we were able to weather the storm and finish our presentation!

Online Facilitation: Taming the World of Online Learning

Week one was great! I learned so much already and am really excited to continue to learn how to faciliate a real online course. I always "knew" that teaching online would be different just like learning online was but never thought about all the little details that really are important. For instance, writing the welcome or initial contact email was a little bit more complicated than I thought it would be. I struggled with how much information I should be including and exactly what information I needed to include. I did not want to create a lengthy letter that is overwhelming yet wanted to provide a well thought out and informative letter at the same it. Another awesome thing we did this week was learning about some of the features Elluminate has as a moderator. The tutiorial we did in class was really helpful and it was nice to see it from a different perspective. I also really liked the activities about synchronous and asynchronous learning on brainhoney. The discussion threads were great to read through and it helped "sum up" what we did in class. I liked that we had to reflect on our class and provide real examples of how these strategies were being used.

week 5

I know I'm 2 days late but...thrilled to say I survived stats! I also think that I actually learned quiet a bit about stats in the process! I am also much more comfortable with the terminology and processes. :) woohoo!!

I would have to stay that discovering google trends this last week was probably one of the highlights in this class. I really enjoyed being able to see how certain things were trending over time. the way google set up trends was also really cool. I like to be able to change the region and time period to make sure the information is relevant to my needs. I am not sure how I can use this for my professional life yet, but do have fun with it in my free time. Maybe I will stumble upon a "prom dress" phenomenon myself!

Week Four

Statistics and Art...

Well now that we are over half way through class I have raelly been pondering how I use statistics in my classroom. I have never really considered doing too much data collection as my curriculum doesn't really have data collection assignments (tests, quizzes, homework) but rather projects and process grades. I am thinking that when I am back in the classroom next year (I will be out on FMLA for the remainder of this school year) that I will begin to track my students grades using some of statistic concepts we have been learning.

I know that my school uses data A LOT and we analyze it through a variety of different tools...MAPS, WKCE, Explore, AIMS, STEM, etc. but this data rarely makes its way into the specialists classrooms (music, art, p.e., health, spanish, face...) on a regular basis as we have such limited time with the students. We know the students scores and how/why the data is important but it is much more difficult to use it daily in our instruction.

I now know how to analyze data that come directly from my curriculum and students to make it relevant to me.

Week 3

Oops!! Having a baby last week has really screwed up my schedule!! :p I seem to have missed week 3's blog response.

Real life stats connection...

After having my daughter I was all of a sudden given tons of statistics about height, weight, breastfeeding, SIDS, etc. and I was thinking about how stats are everywhere in every profession (including motherhood!) Now that I am home and somewhat more coherent, I am wondering about how they get their statistics. Are they samples or populations? What does it mean if my daughter is not on the "charts"? (she was really chunky) How do they know that certain blankets and sleepers help lower the risk of SIDS? It just suprised me that there are statistics all around us that we don't even think twice about. I am now questioning how statistics guide many of our programs in schools and curriculum...interesting thoughts to ponder!