CEP 820 Developer Notebook Final Reflection

http://justrightmath.weebly.com/

My experience creating an online course this semester is one to remember. I am a kindergarten teacher and the website I created for CEP 820 is called “Just Right Math for Kindergarten.” It is meant to be a hybrid course. The website provides students with several informal lessons, learning songs and most importantly, practice. Most of the core math instruction and assessments will be done in the classroom. The online course I ended up creating and the one I had originally planned on creating are as different as night and day. The whole time I was brainstorming ideas for an online course, it never crossed my mind that I would actually be able to create something I could have my kindergarten class use. I asked myself; How could they read the directions? How my students answer questions if they can hardly read, write or type? How would I know if they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing? There were so many “unknowns” that it almost seemed undo-able. It seemed like creating a course for an older crowd would be much easier in this aspect. But I also didn't like the idea of spending over three months creating an online course that I will never use. I expressed some of these concerns in my developer notebook and luckily, my instructor gave me some feedback that convinced me to go for it. This is when I really had to start getting creative. I knew I wanted it to be a “Just Right Math” course because my school has a “Just Right Reading” block of time each day and there has been talk of starting a “Just Right Math” block. I thought this would be the perfect supplement for this. With my new plans in mind, I was excited to get started. But where should I start? I chose Weebly for my course management system. I knew the topic I was going to use so that but the difficult part for me was figuring out how to I was going to present the information in a child-friendly manner that is organized and effective. I used the Common Core State Standards for Kindergarten Math as a guide and I posted them on my online course as well. In order to cover all of the standards for kindergarten math, I needed to provide content in the areas of counting and cardinality, algebraic operations, place value, measurement and geometry. I tried presenting the material in several ways. The first way I tried was a week-by-week online course. So, on Week 2, students would work on the specific lessons and activities that are designated for that week. The problem was that with this format, “Just Right Math” wasn't necessarily “Just Right” for everyone because each child is forced to do the same activity as the rest of the class. Doesn't that defeat the purpose? Next, I separated it into units. This way there was more choices available for each student within each specified unit. The units were going to be used as a pacing guide for me to use with the students. The idea was for the online course to go side-by-side with the content that the students are learning in class. I felt like this way the course was still organized and my problems with accountability would be easier to solve. The only downfall of this was that I teach at a public Montessori school so there isn't actually a map that our curriculum follows. There is no whole group instruction. Everything is as individualized as possible. Therefore, how could I link everything into units? And what exactly would a unit consist of? And who’s to say when it’s time to move to another unit? Finally, I came up with the idea that I am using right now. I plan to keep it too! I simply separated all of the content into eight categories. They each represent major components of the Common Core State Standards for kindergarten math. I broke “counting and cardinality” down into three categories - count sequence, count objects and compare numbers. I also broke “algebraic operations” down into addition and subtraction. The other three categories are place value, measurement and shapes. The best way I can explain it would be to say that I made the entire course available for all students so that they could spend their time online efficiently. Each student will work on different parts of the online course, depending on where they are ability wise in each of the eight different sections. Accountability, documentation and assessment were my next concerns. Among many, many other questions that ran (and still run) through my mind, the one that sticks out the most is, How can I make sure my online course is actually helping children learn? The only way I can think of is observation. Are the students demonstrating a prior knowledge in class of something I have not yet taught them? Are students retaining information that we have not revisited in the classroom in quite some time? Are students performing noticeably better all around than ever before? If the answer to any (or all) of these questions is yes then I am confident that I have designed something that is effective. However (isn't there always?), how do I know if students are just going online and doing nothing but play games and click around? Because I’m only one person with two eyes, I recognize that I cannot watch every student every time they go online. I came up with a strategy that is the best way I know of at this current time to track which lessons and activities students are doing. and whether or not they are challenging for each individual student. I put a Google Form on the bottom of each of the Directions, Lesson, Practice and Challenge pages. The only thing the form asks is for the student’s name. Every time a student uses a page, whether it be watch an instructional video or playing a practice game, they have to type their name and submit it. I have a database that their names are sent to. I have a separate database for each page they submit their name from. In addition, there is an “Exit Survey” they need to fill out each day they visit the online course. It simply asks what lesson they did, if it was too easy, just right, or too difficult and what lesson they will do next. This is a good tool for me to use to keep an extra eye on which students are using which activities and whether or not they are understanding what they are learning. In order to accommodate for my young, inexperienced learners I used lots of aesthetically pleasing colors and pictures, child friendly words and large print. On my “Meet Mrs. Kim” page, I used Voki to read my words out loud via a recording of my voice. Each section has a Screencast demonstrating exactly what to do for each activity. There are other accommodations I would like to someday add such as navigation to the next page links on each page and lesson review screencasts. Hopefully I will get to do that before long. The most important piece of advice I can offer someone who wants to create an online course would be to choose something that interests you and that you will be able to use some day. For me, knowing that I would someday use this for my own students was a driving force to do my best work. I would also recommend having a solid idea of what your expectations are for your online course, before you begin. Be specific. This is something that would have saved me a whole lot of time that was instead spent changing things around on my online course, several times over. My topic of kindergarten math is so broad. It covers such a wide range of topics and an endless amount of resources. It was fun to surf the internet in search of activities for my online course but again, knowing what exactly I was looking for would have been helpful. If I could go back in time and instead choose only one standard of kindergarten math to do, I would not. I recognize that it would have been much more in depth and more easily assessed but I wouldn't have been able to use it as an online “math” course. I wouldn't be able to take my class to the computer lab and have them all visit the “Just Right Math” online course and pick up where they left off. I’m glad I chose to go the extra mile and I look forward to using it with my class!

Here is a link to my Developer Notebook.