Artifact: Create a formative assessment related to a learning standard. Post a link to the assessment or activity and standard in your blog. Explain the purpose of the assessment. Answer: How does your assessment provide students multiple opportunities to demonstrate understanding, practice concepts or self-check progress? How does the assessment allow you to assess student readiness for course content? How do the results of the assessment change your teaching plans or method of delivery? The assessment described in this post is a quiz over Mendel's laws of inheritance. The standard for this segment is Georgia's Biology Standard of Excellence SB3: SB3. Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information to analyze how biological traits are passed on to successive generations. a. Use Mendel’s laws (segregation and independent assortment) to ask questions and define problems that explain the role of meiosis in reproductive variability. After reviewing a module and some require...

Answer: How has the Create module prepared you to meet each standard listed? What strategies will you take away from the Create module and apply to your teaching?  What lessons were most beneficial for you? Standard B: The online teacher understands and is able to use a range of technologies, both existing and emerging, that effectively support student learning and engagement in the online environment. Standard C: The online teacher plans, designs, and incorporates strategies to encourage active learning, application, interaction, participation, and collaboration in the online environment. Standard E: The online teacher models, guides, and encourages legal, ethical, and safe behavior related to technology use. Standard K: The online teacher arranges media and content to help students and teachers transfer knowledge most effectively in the online environment. Lessons from Section 2, "Web Tools" and lessons from Section 4, "Learning Object Authoring" hav...

Answer: Thinking about instructional design, how does each tool benefit the learner by aggregating and presenting material in a cohesive manner? Are there drawbacks to the tools you researched? When I couldn't get the link to the OpenSesame article LMS/LCMS/CMS to open, I did a web search for the article and somehow came across a site called Lessonly . The tool seems to be a really good paid version of a CMS. Lessonly  is a self-proclaimed "anti-LCMS" — equivalent to a LCMS "but with more capabilities." Although  Lessonly  is marketed as a tool for employee training, I believe it has great features that would make it a great tool for online learning as well. As far as creation and hosting of content, cool features include the ability to: capture information in various formats (.doc, .ppt, .pdf) and share it with enrolled users across devices or operating systems create and assign quizzes create feedback loops — this includes the use of video feedback,...

Create:  Using your lesson topic, build two high quality, reusable learning objects. Answer:  What is the intended use of your learning objects?  How might the objects be used in an online or blended classroom? I created the following objects with Educaplay as tools to review concepts in a recent unit on evolution. The interactive map assesses students' understanding of the graphic shown, called a cladogram. Cladograms are used to show evolutionary relationships based on derived characteristics. Students are to place the derived characteristics in their appropriate place on the cladogram. The crossword is an assessment of students' understanding of unit vocabulary. I really like that Educaplay gives me the option to share via link or embed. These would be easy to share as assignments on my LMS, Google Classroom or to embed in a teacher website. I could use either of these items as formative assessments to monitor students' progress on unit standards. Cladogra...

Research: Based on an understanding of learning object authoring tools, locate two learning object authoring tools (free or fee-based).  Link to the tools in your blog. Answer: How might each tool be used in an online classroom? What features should an online teacher look for in a learning object tool? When selecting a tool to author online learning objects, there are a few factors that I believe teachers should consider: Is this tool accessible across all student devices and operating systems? Is this tool a relevant and meaningful tool? Does the learner have some control over how they access and interact with the content, or is prescribed in another sit-and-get format? Are their decision points in the course/interactive that require learners in integrate the content in the module with prior knowledge and/or information from another source? (CRITICAL THINKING) Does the tool provide features for immediate feedback? I believe I'd say that before I would personally pursu...

Research: Locate one online image designated as an open educational resource. Locate one online text object designated as an open educational resource. Locate one online video designated as an open educational resource. Artifact: Post the three objects (including links) to the resources located above and give proper citations. The topic of study I have selected for this segment in the tool is a recent unit on Evolution. I searched for OER resources on natural selection, a subtopic in the unit. Here's what I found: ONLINE IMAGE: By OrientationEB [ CC BY-SA 4.0 ], from Wikimedia Commons ONLINE TEXT OBJECT: I found this textbook chapter as an example of an online text object about natural selection. It is actually part of a larger course, Biology for Majors II , an OER course by Lumen Learning. Biology.  Provided by : OpenStax CNX.   Located at :   http://cnx.org/contents/185cbf87-c72e-48f5-b51e-f14f21b5eabd@10.8 .   License :   CC BY: Attribution . ...

Answer: How might an online or blended classroom teacher use Fair Use when gathering resources for educational purposes? What observations have you made about Fair Use and the TEACH Act and how has it changed your approach to finding reliable content for your students? Creating original content for a traditional classroom is certainly time consuming. Creating digital content  that addresses the needs of learners in a blended or totally online environment: even more difficult. Like teachers in the traditional classroom, online teachers may utilize content or resources that they find online. Unless these resources are public domain or have a CC license with few restrictions, teachers must consider whether Fair Use would apply before sharing the content or implementing the resource. The requirements for Fair Use deal with 1. The purpose and character of the use 2. The nature of the work 3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the work as a whole 4. ...