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toc **MEDT 7475 Artifacts**

Project 3.1 - Review of Georgia Virtual School Mythology Course
**Introduction** In this project I collaborated with four other students in evaluating a Georgia Virtual School (GVS) course that is scheduled to be rolled out in the 2012-2013 school year. We used the Quality Matters, 6-12 rubric to individually evaluate this Mythology course and then we shared and discussed our reasoning for our scores. We assimilated all of our evaluations into one collaborative document and presented the findings to the Georgia Virtual School.

**Phase 1** Project 3 is broken down into 3 phases. Project 3 require students to evaluate a Georgia Virtual School course using a standardized grading rubric called Quality Matters. My group evaluated a mythology course that is projected to be offered for the first time to students during the 2012-2013 school year. Each participant in our group was required to complete the rubric on their own. I gave the course the highest grade with a 71 out of 90 possible points.



In phase 2 our group then conferred to come up with an agreement on scoring. We all noticed that learning objectives were missing from the course and this hurt the score very dramatically. The group met by utilizing Adobe Connect through Course Den. We all very quickly agreed on the point values where there were discrepancies among the individual scores that we completed alone. In this meeting we also decided how we were going to break down the course into five areas for our group video walk-through presentation in phase 3.
 * Phase 2 **



** Phase 3 ** The third phase of this project required students to build a video walk-through. Each of the 5 members of the group chose a different area to discuss in the video walk-through. I introduced our project group in my video and I also discussed the effectiveness of the navigation inside the course. I made a few minor suggestions as to how the course navigation could be improved.

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It was eye-opening to see the level of professional work that goes into building these online courses. I was able to get a glimpse at what the state of GA considers a quality online course. Evaluating online courses like this one allows me the opportunity to reflect on what I might do different if I were building an online course. Evaluating this mythology course also gives me ideas about navigation, tools, and activity ideas for an online course that I might one day build. My goal is to be equipped to help my school system build and pilot the first, purely online, learning program.
 * Reflection **

Project 3.2 - Virtual Mentorship Experience
For this project I was assigned a Georgia Virtual School mentor in the math content. The course that I was allowed to fully experience was a Math 4 class for high school seniors. I chose to observe a math course because math is my current assignment as a special education collaborative teacher. My quickly developed a great professional relationship with my mentor and she was willing to share so much. My mentor allowed me to step into the course and observe discussion postings and video chats where content notes and one-on-one help is offered to students. I asked so many general questions about the frequency of student participation, differentiating instruction for various learners, and how my mentor might accommodate students with disabilities. My journal reflections that records what my mentor and I discussed through email and phone conferencing is below.
 * Introduction **

**Journal Reflections** In each link below is the journal reflections that I completed after each step in the virtual mentor process. These are the details of the conversations between Corrine McKeown and I.

@Mentor Meeting Week 1

@Mentor Meeting Week 2

@Mentor Meeting Week 3

Mentor Meeting Week 4


 * Mentor Meeting Notes **

The virtual mentor experience was a unique and enlightening experience for me. I had the most wonderful mentor, Corrine McKeown. She answered all of my questions and did not appear to hold back any information that I was seeking. We talked using Skype and our meetings usually lasted more than an hour because I had so many questions that she was so willing to answer. Many of my questions during the first meeting were about student numbers and student expectations and procedures. Corrine shared with me success stories and unsuccessful stories and she was completely honest about the pros and cons of Georgia Virtual School. In other meetings we discussed hoe GVS can be embedded in brick and mortar schools as a blended learning opportunity. I really like the blended learning option and I would like to see my school system incorporate the blended learning model and embed these classes in the regular high school schedule. Our course offering at my school has dwindled due to funding cuts at the state and local school levels. Utilizing GVS's blended model would expand the opportunity for high school students to be exposed to curriculum that we may not offer at our school through the face-to-face model. After completing the mentor experience I have been interested and excited at the possibility of one day being able to work in the virtual learning environment. I would like to teach an adjunct class once I finish my EDS degree.
 * Reflection **

Project 3.3 - Online Professional Development
** Needs Assessment Survey ** I developed a survey in Google Docs to assess the professional development needs that other teachers in my school. I had about 30 respondents to the survey. The survey responses were very beneficial for making the decision about what technologies teachers want to know more about. A high percentage of the teachers that completed the form submitted that they would like to learn more about Google Docs. This survey also helped me decide how I should deliver the instruction.

Survey

**Professional Development Activity** Based on the responses from my survey I determined to train teachers and students in my building how to use Google Docs to meet their personal and professional needs. I used Edmodo to deliver the professional development training because I think it has a very nice asynchronous component to it and I wanted to expose teachers to Edmodo with hopes that they may want to know more about how Edmodo might be able to help them become more effective teachers. //Click the picture below to see if you have what it takes to become a Ninja Master.//



**Journal Reflections** The links below will take you to the journal reflections that describes my thoughts in the planning and implementation of the professional development lesson on Google Docs.

Journal Reflection 1: Picking a Platform

Journal Reflection 2: Needs Survey

Journal Reflection 3: Preparing for Virtual Mentorship Experience

Journal Reflection 4: Selecting a Topic

This professional development project helped me understand the extensive planning procedures that are needed to develop an online professional development lesson. I surveyed teachers at my high school to attempt to gain understanding of their professional technology needs that may help them be more effective teachers.
 * Reflection **

Op-Ed Piece
My op-ed piece questioned the intentions of the Georgia state legislature's proposal to mandate every high school student take and pass an online course to graduate. The proposal appears to be another unfunded mandate by our state legislature. Local school systems would have to pay for each high school student to take one online course.

__Who Will Finance Georgia’s Online Education Mandate, State Government, Local Government, or Parents?__ [|7475OP-ED.pdf]