Week 6 & 7 Reflection

In continuing to reflect on the facilitated chat/discussion I have two primary mediums I would like to discuss. First, I initially signed up for SlideShare for my online community building activity, and I expressed my frustration with the site. As a result, I decided to spend more time building my knowledge and skills for using Edmodo, this is a resource I currently use in my classroom and want to get better at using. In this reflection I have also considered my experience in the Diamond group where we developed classroom expectations in the online environment

My experience with both Edmodo and the Diamond group have enabled me to attempt new things in my traditional. Over the course of the last few weeks I have asked my students to participate in online discussions using Edmodo. I posted a series of articles and for each article students were to annotate in alignment with a specific Common Core standard we have been working on. In conjunction, students were given a controversial question attached to the article. Students were to post their thoughts (citing textual evidence) on Edmodo.

I saw similar advantages to what I experienced in the netiquette discussion. My students were exposed to diverse opinions, challenged to think beyond their comfort zone, and forced to sharpen their communication skills.

However, I saw more downfalls. The first being that the class size was not ideal for such a discussion. With 35 plus students in each class it became difficult for students to engage in healthy conversation when so many people were responding. In addition, students had very little experience with netiquette for the online setting. Responses weren’t inappropriate, but students quickly strayed away from the topic.

The big thing I saw was that the physical teacher presence isn’t necessary for student learning and appropriate discussion; however, the teacher presence is extremely beneficial in facilitating. I see so much value in having conversation face-to-face and being able to speak in the moment. In all honesty, I’m not sure where I plan to go from this point in helping my class engage in online discussion, but I do know I am open and ready for new experience. Thus, I really appreciate the resources, challenges, and opportunities being offered in 521.