Interactivity #4

Interactivity #4 Spreadsheet

I chose this particular lesson because it meshed with the unit plan I am working on in my methods class: The Cold War, and was a little more comprehensive than some of the others I had found. It does have it's shortcomings though. I found that it lacked specificity, especially in the inclusion of media technologies, but I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt, figuring that using things such as a PowerPoint presentation while lecturing are pretty much implied now, and need not be specified. I also thought that there could have been more emphasis on specifying media usage during the oral presentation, rather than just listing "visual aids". Again, this could be implied, as students today are more accustomed to including all types of technologies in their works.

The key point to this activity was the student's use of the internet to research their assigned topics. The plan offered three websites as examples to get the students started, but made no limits on which ones they used. I probably would have given them a few more examples, and encouraged them to explore ones that come up further down on the search results list, especially since the requirements stated that opposing views (U.S. v. USSR) were mandatory. The lesson probably could have been completed as a traditional research assignment, by having the students source books from the library, but I don't feel they would have come up with nearly the amount of information in the time allotted compared to internet searching.

Overall, I believe that this lesson will meet the stated learning goals, and conform to the NJCCCS CPI's, but would be better with the media recommendations stated above. Their inclusion will transform this from a good lesson to a great one by applying differentiated learning strategies that will be an asset to all.

Interactivity #3

I entered Interactivity #3 with definite reservations. My experience with online collaboration from a previous web based class that I eventually dropped, gave me an idea of  what I perceived would happen with this: people would do their work, and no actual collaboration would take place.

Unfortunately, that's what basically happened with our group, although I did have some contact with a couple of the members via e-mail, our conversations were not really directed towards the assignment. It was mostly in regards to everyone's status due to Hurricane Sandy.  I think we were all too preoccupied with recovering than collaborating. I know I was. When I did get to a relative's house that had power and internet, I accessed the spreadsheet and saw that everybody had made their inputs. That did leave me with a fairly daunting task, which was to find stuff they had not. Difficult, but after what seemed like days, I finally got it done. 

I think that our inventory definitely provided some good technologies that we can use. I'm personally using a couple of them currently, and have used a few of the others in classes or lesson planning in the recent past. 

I am convinced that online collaboration is viable. I'm a member of a couple of organizations that regularly collaborate online with documents or projects, and I do contribute to those or at least comment on their progress, but that is often done through a forum or regular e-mail list. I wonder how we can make that willing voluntary participation work for students who are assigned groups and are basically forced to participate?  Somehow we either need to incentivize it better, or transfer the  ownership to the students so they believe it is all of their doing, and not something we're making them do.

Something to think about.