B. Flight Plan

About me: Upon successful completion of this course, I will officially have the MET program half complete. I am keenly interested in online learning environments, especially blended learning environments (face to face and online). I am currently a special assignment teacher, JK-12 information technology for the St. Clair Catholic District School Board in south-western Ontario. Of the many ‘hats’ I wear in my role, one is the DeLC (District eLearning Contact) and Blended Learning Project Lead. eLearning Ontario uses the Desire2Learn Learning Management System.

Goals: I hope to gain a better understanding of online course development and various Learning Management Systems (ie. Moodle, Desire to Learn). This translates as actually creating a course and up/down loading to an LMS.

What I Hope to Learn: I hope to have a better understanding of online course development, as well as LMS tools (discussions, dropboxes, blogs, journals, etc.) I intend to integrate software, web2.0, and multimedia in to curriculum to make the online or blended course as rich and engaging as possible (as opposed to an online textbook with comprehension questions).

I plan to focus on assessment strategies, especially focused on assessment for learning. Included will be ‘bumping up’ student writing through effective teacher moderation of authentic writing samples. Critical literacy skills are not only needed by students but teachers, as well. More and more teachers are interested in providing ‘blended’ or partial online learning opportunities for their students. I hope to explore further the concept of academic networking in elementary and secondary settings (vs. social networking).

Finally, I want to explore online learning environments for teacher professional development. This may include an introductory guide to online learning which may include effective practises, copyright and intellectual property theft, etc.

Resources: At this point, I am unclear on what resources or support I will need, therefore this is meant as a preliminary list only. I intend to update this page to reflect my ongoing learning process.

Glogowski, K. (2008) Assessment in the 21st Century Classroom. http://www.slideshare.net/teachandlearn/assessment-in-the-21stcentury-classroom-presentation

Moodle Support,. http://www.lambdasolutions.net/moodle-services

Richardson. W. (2006) Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, 3rd edition. Corwin Press