A Time to Reflect:
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In teaching middle school students, I want to create a website that is user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing. I want it to be a place where students and parents want to visit and use regularly. For CEP 820, Teaching K-12 Students Online, I chose to use Weebly to create my course website/module. Weebly is not a true Learning Management System, but rather a website creation tool. I had previous experience with using Weebly and love the ease with which Weebly allows users to set up a functional, professional site with drag and drop tools. It is extremely customizable and with an educator account it also provides teachers with student accounts, allowing our students to create their own sites to be used as electronic portfolios, etc. For my face-to-face classroom where we are integrating technology and moving toward a more blended-learning experience, it is the tool that I feel best meets my needs and the needs of the students and community I serve.
I believe that we, as educators, reach our individual students in different ways and that by providing information for students in a variety of ways, through various media, hands-on activities and projects, etc. we can have a positive impact on the success of our students. My teaching strategy is to improve student’s content understanding by using my website to house content in a variety of forms (text, audio, video, practice quizzes, links to supporting articles, diagrams) for the student’s varied learning styles. By using the online environment in this manner, I feel I can provide more opportunities to support my students needs than I am able to give them in the 50 minutes of class time per day alone.
By placing content online for students it makes it more accessible to them when and where they want it. Providing content in varied forms can also make it more engaging for students. My goal is to empower students to become more self-directed learners, determining which of the available resources online is going to meet their learning needs in the best way. In this, I hope students will begin to enjoy the process of learning, as well as the content being presented.
When designing my online module for this course I began with an organization system that I felt was easy to follow, designating subpages for unit videos, notes, and assignments. As I continued to work with the unit, it became more difficult on each given page to find specific content, because students would have to scroll down the page to find the proper chapter and it’s content. Upon peer review, a CEP 820 classmate suggested that this organizational system might be hard for students, in particular special-needs students, to navigate. At this point, I changed the organization, making subpages for each chapter and then organizing the content for that chapter within each of those pages. I believe this will make more organizational sense to my students and their parents. Within each chapter, the major assignments were also given their own pages to clearly state guidelines, due dates, and more.
What I have learned the most through the process of website design for online learning, regardless of whether it is for a fully online course or a blended learning environment, such as mine, is that the design process is never fully complete. As we create and review, as students begin using the tools we have provided, as we gain new information or find better tools or resources, we continue to modify and revise. It is through this continual process of creation and revision that we as educators grow and we see our students reach new heights.
I believe that we, as educators, reach our individual students in different ways and that by providing information for students in a variety of ways, through various media, hands-on activities and projects, etc. we can have a positive impact on the success of our students. My teaching strategy is to improve student’s content understanding by using my website to house content in a variety of forms (text, audio, video, practice quizzes, links to supporting articles, diagrams) for the student’s varied learning styles. By using the online environment in this manner, I feel I can provide more opportunities to support my students needs than I am able to give them in the 50 minutes of class time per day alone.
By placing content online for students it makes it more accessible to them when and where they want it. Providing content in varied forms can also make it more engaging for students. My goal is to empower students to become more self-directed learners, determining which of the available resources online is going to meet their learning needs in the best way. In this, I hope students will begin to enjoy the process of learning, as well as the content being presented.
When designing my online module for this course I began with an organization system that I felt was easy to follow, designating subpages for unit videos, notes, and assignments. As I continued to work with the unit, it became more difficult on each given page to find specific content, because students would have to scroll down the page to find the proper chapter and it’s content. Upon peer review, a CEP 820 classmate suggested that this organizational system might be hard for students, in particular special-needs students, to navigate. At this point, I changed the organization, making subpages for each chapter and then organizing the content for that chapter within each of those pages. I believe this will make more organizational sense to my students and their parents. Within each chapter, the major assignments were also given their own pages to clearly state guidelines, due dates, and more.
What I have learned the most through the process of website design for online learning, regardless of whether it is for a fully online course or a blended learning environment, such as mine, is that the design process is never fully complete. As we create and review, as students begin using the tools we have provided, as we gain new information or find better tools or resources, we continue to modify and revise. It is through this continual process of creation and revision that we as educators grow and we see our students reach new heights.