I thought I was prepared well for the course. I was expecting that students in this class would be engaged in discussion as they did last week. Unfortunately, they were not very talkative this week. I continuously had to call on their names to have them talk. When I had them have group discussions again they did not talk a lot. They did not remember anything from the reading as I asked questions about technology professional development process and guidelines. I had them find the readings and look for the answers to questions I was asking. I emphasized them that the unit tests will mostly be from the readings so they need to read them carefully. One thing that may help them pay more attention to the readings may be the lecture instructors to remind them to read the readings before class and maybe have questions directly from readings in the lecture worksheets. So far the lecture questions were mostly from the lecture presentations and they were mostly overlapping. Just a thought...
They were sleepy too :( The lights were half off when I got in the room and I had not turned all the lights on when I started. After the first half of the class they seemed very quiet and sleepy. I told them to have a break and wash their faces :)
Also, I am not sure about the "Portfolio Discussion" page. What is it exactly for?
I do not like google sites because we do not have control on many things like we have in Dreamweaver or Nvu. I am not experienced enough to solve the problems they might have so I am nervous about that. It is not just about creating pages and links. Some things are done in not-very clever ways such as uploading files. Is deleting and re-creating only way of changing top-level pages to sub-level pages? How do we make subpages indented under toplevel pages in the navigation? I need to talk to AB and get some help from him. I asked the other assistants today and yesterday but they do not know the answers either. I don't like saying "I don't know" for the things I should know as an instructor.
For the portfolio shell, I just had them create the pages. I did not show them how to create links or upload files. Maybe next week I can show them.
I already began to worry about my Friday class as it is the last class the students have before weekend. I had candies before so I don't want to give candies again. I looked for Group Interactive Games in my GITT folder but could not see anything easily applicable this week. I need a really interactive activity to make them engaged.
I read the blogs of some other AIs. A lot of them are having similar issues. Students are not always engaged in talking. I find that they write a lot when I ask them to write their reflections or answers in Wiki or Google pages. I should try more to make them engaged and productive at the same time.
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My Friday lab went better than the Wednesday lab. I first had them work in pairs to answer 6-7 questions from readings and lecture. They created a google doc and shared with me. Even though I emailed them the day before to remind them to read that week's reading again none of them actually remembered anything from the readings. All of them opened the readings and found the answers there. Again and again I emphasized that the unit tests will be mostly from readings and lecture presentations. I hope they really care and read the readings carefully.
I skipped the learning tool activity and we had 10 minutes whole group discussion about teacher professional development and technology. I had them sign in to IGoogle and showed how to add tabs and add RSS. They liked and found it very useful and smart. After a five minutes break, I introduced the eportfolio by answering their questions in the lecture worksheets. Students in this section did not have a lot of questions about artifacts. I showed them some example artifacts to describe what they will look like. Then we created the portfolio shell. I had them create just the pages. We did not touch to the navigation or any other thing. They created a file cabinet page as well.
Then I talked about professional development plan and told them they can see examples in the Oncourse resources. I made clear that their objectives were mostly be related to their own development as teachers since they are teaching yet. They than opened the workout and typed their first version of PD plan. They uploaded to their google site in the file cabinet page. Some of them uploaded a copy to the Oncourse some of them did not because I said OK. They will be working on their PD s again in a few things. I was not sure if I needed to give feedback to them. I can ask them to send me the link for their websites and read their PD plans from there, I guess.
There is an important problem with the PD plans of my Wednesday class. Some students' file could not be opened. I will check with IC if they can do anything to open the files. It says the file is created in an older version of Word and it cannot be opened. If I cannot open the students cannot open either. That means they will have to rewrite it :( which I don't want them to do. Technology does not always cooperate:(
What I learned from this week is that I should not think that students mood change every week. Last week my Wed class were very talkative but this week they were very sleepy even if the topic as more interesting this week. As Dr L suggested, it would be better to have small group activities in which they all talk rather than whole class activities where a few people talk.
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