If I Were to Redesign My Unit

The Introduction to 2D Art integrated seamlessly many otherwise disjointed pieces of online courses, the student profile, blog, class latest activities, course content and tools such as ePortfolio. I also like the 'featured' concept, a little competition between students is always healthy.
I would also provide a way for students to instant message each other on the site to facilitate collaboration and sharing ideas.

Creating a curriculum unit...what could I possibly be concerned about?

My first curriculum unit ever, where would I start?
I've never been a teacher and the last time I attended a class, well, before this one, was many years ago. 

I want to make sure I can develop something real and of high quality. We discussed many issues with online courses, I hate to make the same mistakes the class and I criticized.  Coming up with activities and resources doesn't seem as big a challenge as figuring out the objectives and mostly assessments!

Good luck to me :)

Dina

Another Look at "Comparing Online Programs"

So I looked back at the Google spreadsheet where I placed FLVS Florida virtual state school and AZVA Arizona charter school on the appropriate columns.

After all the readings I've done and the discussions I had with my classmates, I moved FLVS on Learner Autonomy from Both to Independent Self Paced. Having a better understanding now of what it means to have a collaborative course, I don't see FLVS doing any real collaborative class-paced courses.

I also moved student-student activity from High to Medium and I'm even tempted to take it down to low, given how FLVS can do a lot more in that area based on all the student-student interaction models and ideas we discussed this week.

I'm surprised as I thought when I did that assignment that I got it right. It's interesting to see how the new knowledge I gained has provided more richness to the way I view virtual schools.

My TPI Results

At first I was surprised to see that Nurturing is my dominant style. I guess it’s the word nurturing that threw me off. After reflecting on the description further I realized that this is both my preference for learning as well as teaching. Providing an environment of trust, support and encouragement while challenging the learner to grow is what I believe teaching is all about.
Besides my dominant perspective, it seems like I strongly hold 3 other perspectives: Apprenticeship, Developmental and Social Reform since my scores are in the 30s for all of them. This fits well with my view of myself as a teacher, I know that when I teach I have intentions to guide students through the process of acquiring the skills I master, look at the content from the learner’s point of view and encourage students to reflect on how they can improve their lives and the lives of others. This is confirmed by the fact that my highest intentions scores fall under these 3 perspectives and my dominant one.
I struggled as I was completing the TPI to keep a specific educational context in mind; I’m not a school teacher but I manage training programs, teach software development processes occasionally and I’m also a fitness instructor. In my role as a training program manager, I realized that although not a subject matter expert, I can still assist in students learning activities by noticing where they have gaps and providing guidance to fill them. This could explain my low score on Transmission. Yet, as a fitness instructor, I find myself working hard on making the fitness goal attainable to all my students by breaking it down into concepts and actions that guide them along the way. Hence, a high score on Apprenticeship was not surprising to me.

I believe that ideally a teacher’s TPI results should not differ if they teach FTF or online since TPI results identify a teacher’s philosophy. That said, I believe some teachers who might be moving or new to online could have slightly different scores. I doubt their believes would change but as a result of training on online teaching and/or departmental directions, their intentions might change. Also, being new to online, they might still be looking for ways to accomplish some of these perspectives so their actions scores might change.
For teachers who are experienced in both FTF and online environments, I believe that even though actual scores might differ, the recessive as well as combination of dominant and backup perspectives will remain the same.

My TPI results are:
Transmission total: (Tr)   29.00
  B=11; I=6; A=12
Apprenticeship total: (Ap)  38.00
  B=11; I=14; A=13
Developmental total: (Dv)  35.00
  B=8; I=14; A=13
Nurturance total: (Nu)  40.00
  B=13; I=15; A=12
Social Reform total: (SR)  36.00
  B=11; I=14; A=11

Personalized Learning

As I was looking at some sample online courses and evaluating them this week, I was reminded of one of the main appeal of online courses; personalized learning and I learned one way to evaluate that aspect. According to NACOL national standards, an excellent online course provides students with multiple learning paths so they can connect the dots and reflect on the new concepts introduced. It would also cater to the different learning styles and mastery level needs and would provide frequent teacher-student interaction to track individual progress.
In the future, when I design, evaluate or deploy an online course, I would look for this criteria to be satisfied.

Dina

A Different View of Online Schooling

I learned more about online schooling since the first week, I had this impression in the beginning that online schools are all multimedia and no teachers are involved. I thought once instructional designers figured out the course design, everything after that was simple.
I realize now that teachers are involved and I understand why, I also get how complicated teaching an online course must be. Decisions that could affect the learning outcome need to be made such as how many students per course, how often should the student-teacher and student-student interaction and what's the best form of interaction to use.

How Would I Choose an Online School for My Child?

I would pick an online school based on quality, support, teacher availability, social activities, reputation and commitment for improvement.