Mentor+Meeting+Week+3

My mentor has graciously allowed me access to the entire course from discussions to the gradebook. I reviewed the video chat presentations and they are set in a Powerpoint format and the teacher uses Adobe Connect to present these lessons to her students. In every lesson she allows them ample time to practice the problems and then reveals the answers. She then works the problems out with every little detail covered. I can see how Mrs. Mckeown could have success with learning disabled students. She explains content with graphics organizers and she utilizes signalling in her lessons by circling important details and connecting relationships among items by using the same color markings. She reiterates in every lesson that she is willing to help at anytime and she reminds them that they need to advocate. Mrs. Mckeown gives her students her personal phone number so the students can call her anytime with questions.

I have noticed that she has many students that have not been participating in the class through discussions, quizzes, and tests and many of these have not participated since the personal introduction on the first day of class. It appears that some of these students online expectations were different than what they actually experienced once in the course. I do not know if these students are still on the role or whether they have dropped the class. I am curious to know the percentage of students who start a GA virtual school class actually finish.

Mrs. Mckeown sent me links to many of the web resources that she uses in her online classes. I quickly realized that these resources could be utilized in my face-to-face classes. I will make a point to utilize the resources that she showed me in my own classes.