Updated on 8/17/2015

8.1 Self-Reflection for the iNACOL Standards for Quality Online Teaching

Self evaluation for The iNACOL standards for Quality Online Teaching

Standard A

The online teacher knows the primary concepts and structures of effective online instruction and is able to create learning experiences to enable student success.

Teacher Abilities. I learned from this course how to modify or create my lesson to be more accessible and meaningful for all my different grades. I am creating lesson that will involve student to work and collaborate as a team by using web 2.0 tools like Google docs and voicethread. I do have my teacher’s credential that authorizes me to teach Media and Technology as well as mathematics. In order to keep up with new technologies and academic skills I have collected a vast of web sites that contain these particular concepts.

Standard B

The online teacher understands and is able to use a range of technologies, both existing and emerging, that effectively support student learning and engagement in the online environment.

This course introduced me to learn how to manage Haiku Learning Management System and the capabilities built within this computer program. I have learned to troubleshoot common problems in Haiku, for example reset student’s passwords and send open invitations for students’ enrollment in the online course.

In my resent attendance to the CUE (Computers Using Educators) conference in Palm Spring CA. I learned about more resources to teach in my Scratch Programming class and technologies that can be implemented in the online course.

Standard C

The online teacher plans, designs, and incorporates strategies to encourage active learning, application, interaction, participation, and collaboration in the online environment.

In the past weeks I have been trying out most of my learning from this course to implement them in my own courses. I have learned to create interaction among students by creating group discussions and wikiprojects. How to facilitate instruction for student’s projects and assignments.  I am currently using Edmodo as the main source of communication with all my students, I have been able to provide remote assistance to students and parents.

Standard D

The online teacher promotes student success through clear expectations, prompt responses, and regular feedback.

I have learned to communicate my course expectations more clearly by correcting my own mistakes and the recommendation from my Instructor. This is one of the areas where I need to have a peer review before posting my syllabus and rubrics online. I have been contacting more frequently with students and parents that are falling behind the course schedule by facilitating them with copies of my lesson and giving them alternate assessments.

Standard E

The online teacher models, guides, and encourages legal, ethical, and safe behavior related to technology use.

This course emphasizes the importance of communicating Digital Citizenship to our students and has provided me with resources to use by my own and my students. I provide resources and useful links that are legal to use and download in my Photoshop class. I constantly communicate with my students’ ethical and safe behavior when browsing the Internet or when they are working on a project. Students are provided with an AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) at the begging of each year. FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) is a new term that I learned in this course.

Standard F

The online teacher is cognizant of the diversity of student academic needs and incorporates accommodations into the online environment.

I have learned to make my resources accessible for all students. It took me a while to add captions to my project but at the end it was a rewarding experience. I learned about the legal requirements by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). I do communicate with the corresponding RSP Teacher (Resource Specialist Program) with the special accommodation or modification for students with IEP (Individualized Education Program) or 504 plans

Standard H

The online teacher develops and delivers assessments, projects, and assignments that meet standards-based learning goals and assesses learning progress by measuring student achievement of the learning goals.

In this course I was able to identify the different types of assessments. This learning took place during our group discussions. I learned to use RubiStar to create or modify my own rubrics.

Standard I

The online teacher demonstrates competency in using data from assessments and other data sources to modify content and to guide student learning

This is the one area that I need to strength. I need to collaborate with the core subject’s teachers to create lessons that incorporate current lessons.

I learned to make a self-evaluation of my current learning and I will use it to incorporate in my current courses.

Standard J

The online teacher interacts in a professional, effective manner with colleagues, parents, and other members of the community to support students’ success.

I have been using Edmodo as the main communication medium between teacher, students and parents. I constantly check my email for correspondence or notifications. I make phone calls to keep information with parents. I am also developing lessons in Spanish and make them accessible in our school’s parent center.

Standard K

The online teacher arranges media and content to help students and teachers transfer knowledge most effectively in the online environment.

This is my area of strength. I try to keep myself updated with new resources for my students. This is my first year using a LMS and I love Haiku, It is so easy to manage and students can browse the pages and upload materials with minimum help from the teacher. I started using and transferring my learning from this course into my own courses. My students love using Haiku as a source to access the course’s information.

I personal gain a lot from this course, not only with the technical staff to manage the LMS but on making my instructions clearly and easier to follow. I also learned to post my lesson by embedding the HTML code rather than uploading the videos or documents.

I have started to implement my new learning with my own classes, for example I assigned them The about me Project and students up to date keep updating their wikiproject constantly.

I plan to continue using Haiku as the main LMS, but I am also planning on learning to more about Moodle. I will keep in contact with my classmates from this course to exchange ideas and information, but more than anything I hope to teach an online course in a near feature.

Thank you Jeff for all your support

JRizo

6.3 Technology and Assessments

Summative assessments: My understanding of this concept is to measure the learning of each individual student at any point, for example using rubrics that describe what is expected from students to complete a particular assignment. Students use the rubric as a guide to accomplish the desire task given by the teacher. The rubric should follow an easy format easy for students to follow and understand. The vocabulary used on the rubric play also a very important role on this assessment. I started using rubrics this current semester and the results have been more positive, most of my students have been engaged and completing their assignments almost on time. E-portfolio I am planning on having my students on saving their work using their google drive and have their completed assignments shared with the teacher and their parents. My understanding is that Google drive is a powerful web 2.0 tool that can be use as an external USB drive saved somewhere in the sky (cloud computing) a can be accessed from anywhere.

Formative assessments: In order to measure students current understanding of the material for a particular unit I will use Edmodo to create and grade my online quizzes. I can also use Edmodo to share the correct responses and give them a positive feedback of their responses. Students will use the discussion board from Haiku LMS, the same way is used in this course. Students will also write their reflections on Google docs and have them shared with the teacher. So far this semester I have been applying and modifying my instructions from what I have been learning in this course. Students are learning at their own pace and given ample time to complete their work. Some of the technological factors to consider are; students’ computers capability of loading web 2.0 tools, additional technical support to configure and work with web 2.0 tools. Those factors can be solve by creating a site that will provide solutions to frequent Q&A, examples are: video lessons or visual guides.

4.3 Social and Professional Networks

My personal interaction when using a computer and browsing the Internet is mostly on obtaining information for educational purpose, I like to browse and research on new technologies or free web tools and sites to use in my classroom. There are many tools and sites available that it is difficult not to review them. Many times I get distracted from doing what I have in mind for a particular Internet section, and it usually happens when I check my email. It is difficult to stay away from taking a glance in my mail. In general the Internet has help me to teach new computer lessons as well as free resources to share with my students, for example I found a site like Code Academy that offers free tutorial on programming, there are many sites like Code Academy and Khan Academy that are encourage me to search for other similar sites. I try to stay away from social web sites such as Facebook, I do use it momentarily and I try to stay away from it. The first screen shot of my social activity on facebook shows a picture of myself with three of my friend taken back in the 1981. I received about 20 comments within 2 day of my initial post, and I still receiving comments on it. The second screen shot is a post where I encourage my friends to view the video Did you Know and the audience response is almost zero. It seems to me that many facebook users want to socialize and the don’t care on educational sites. I can use this experience and teach my students the negativity of social sites and encourage them to use educational sites by sharing a resource tool such as delicious that will contain many educational sites, and resources to social learning such as Edmodo and Edublogs

3.3 Using Web 2.0 Tools

In my classroom students have been using Edmodo from the beginning of the current semester and they love it. Edmodo is considered a Learning Management System and it is known as the facebook for teachers and students. On Edmodo my students really like to make their own avatars and change them whenever they want. Edmodo has its own educational applications embedded in the program like Sokikomon Math apps. They compete with their own classmates or with other students from other parts of the world. Students enjoy playing math games from Sokikomon, they earn points from advancing into different level and they can use their earned point to buy accessories for their avatars. I also use Sokikomon’s class management tool to give and take away students’ behavior points. Student can view their behavior point in real time. I use Edmodo to send current information, post a new assignment, give a link to a website. Students have also used Edmodo to post their completed assignments and to send message to the class or directly to the teacher. Parents can also be part of class by registering in Edmodo, using a particular code number that is given by their own student. When my students’ stared using Edmodo they didn’t have difficulty to familiarizes themselves with the program they connected easily to the application, because of its similarity to a Facebook an application that is well known and used by many of them.  Students also use Edmodo to post an assignment created using Wordle a wonderful web 2.0 tool to create words and posters. They were collaborating and creating their own designs. I am currently teaching an elective course and I am trying to incorporate some of the web 2.0 tools that can be used in their core classes. The outcome of working with Wordle was to encourage students to explore a similar tool such as Tugxedo and create their own design to be used on the present yearbook cover.

2.2 Methodologies of the Online Instructor

The school year had already stared back in 2011, when I was hired as a Media and Technology teacher at Burbank Middle School; so far it has been a good and positive change from my career as a Mathematics teacher. The first months as a Media teacher. I had to focus on classroom management and learning editing programs like Photo Shop to teach to my students.

This present year I am teaching three different grade levels and I am teaching different computer programs. It has been a little challenging   trying to teach so many things in so little time. Now that I been learning more and more about Blended and Online courses, I have been spending many hours learning many new tools that are available over the Internet.

In the next school year I am planning on changing or getting better to organize all of my resources in a more effective way. There are times that I spend or waste time on re-organizing my teaching resources.

I was not aware that LAUSD is already offering online courses at a high school level, as I was browsing about it. I learned about the different courses that they have been taught over the Internet. LAUSD is offering intervention courses, in different subjects as well as advance courses in Mathematics such as Calculus. Those courses are at high school level.

I wonder if LAUSD is planning on extending their online courses to the middle school students.

Another area of improvement to better support my students in an online environment, it will be to learn to use all of the features of a learning management system and the use of the proper technological resources available to facilitate students’ success.

I personally want to learn the technical aspect of the online environment; I would like to learn to fix the technical problems that might arise while teaching an online course.