What A Week

And it ain't over yet. This the final week of my 810 class and I only have a couple of assignments to go. YEA! But I still have work to do for 811. After Tuesday I'll be blogging from Ireland. Have laptop, will travel. What else would I be doing in my spare time? I should be able to keep up, if not I'll be working like crazy when I get back. My middle child, Aileen, is studying abroad there and working in a 3-6 grade classroom. I'm going to have to see what that is like. It coincides with my 25th wedding anniversary. We took a family vacation there 10 years ago and have been wanting to go back. I did get approval to take a couple of days off before break, although when I met with my principal on it, he had my leave form sandwiched in a copy of the contract. I need to stop talking now and get back to the books, er, technology.
Mike

Computer based Instruction

Its been a big learning curve for me so far. I use computer based instruction now, but they are nothing I created. They are ones that I pay for or get free through an association. They work great. They also have teams of people to create, maintain and upgrade them. With my team of me, I can see where while I would like to have stand alone instruction for a lot of my areas, I'm not sure how fast of a process that would be. I could dedicate all of my spare time to creating project, but we where that would go. I think their use should be used where they will have the greatest impact. Pick and chose.
The WebQuests I have seen that relate to what I do seem pretty weak. Still as a format to focus students I the direction they need to go, I think they can be a valuable tool. Personally I think my limit would to use them on days I am not in the classroom (absent). I don't want students in the shop for liability reasons, but a WebQuest to give a better direction to a given assignment.
I like the StAIRs concept. All troubleshooting and diagnosing of problems on a vehicle follow a flow chart and basically this is what StAIRs is. A student flows through the program learning and making decisions which lead to the next step or it may route them to a different flow.
Creating computer based Instruction Objects are very time consuming, but if I work off a common template, I could use that template to create several objects. Again pick and chose for the biggest impact.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

Good day All. Hope we're getting everything done. I didn't go out tonight, so I toasted to St Pat and kept on working. I had to make a spreadsheet with all my new webpages, user names and passwords. Only way to keep them straight. I should have done that from the start.
Good night, tomorrows another day.

Finally

If you are reading this, I finally got the url right. If not Steven will let me know. Thanks Steven!!
Well Monday night, a couple of tutorials knocked off. Thank goodness my 810 assignment is excel and I can just use my current gradebook. Oh yeah, did I mention I'm lead negotiator for our association and we meet every Monday. Hey what else am I going to do.

Blogs v Web pages

Blogs allow more input from subscribers with feedback being as instantaneous as the next post. Subscribers can respond to other posts, more like a conversation. Blogs are described as news feeds, I see it as water cooler discussions.
Web pages are not as flexible. I see them more as a posting of news rather than a sharing of news. A one way street rather than two-way traffic. Someone lecturing, this is how it is, no talking among yourselves. Information is put up and you can discuss it with the person sitting next to you.

Hello Steve, Max, Katy and Jed
I hope this is right. Session 1 has been very confusing to me.

Hello Everyone. I don't recommend taking two online classes at the same time especially if they are your first ever online classes. If I had more tech before this, maybe it would be less stressful, but learning the tech as you go is a challenge.