Reflective Journal


Reflective Journal, Module Eight

Tried to get to the readings on Monday. Went into school to drop off books for the baby shower (my principal is having twins) and printed the reading off. I have tried to be as paperless as possible for this course, partly for environmental reasons and partly as an experiment. I sometimes feel very old school while working toward my geeky certificate (no offense) and while loving my techie toys. Often, paperless worked, but when stressed or feeling like I need to get to my readings in any spare moment, for me paper is the way to go - totally portable, no electricity needed.

Accessibility and universal design are pretty interesting things to think about in general, but I hadn’t gotten that far in applying any information I had to the online world. I spend quite a bit of time thinking about accessibility at school, partly because it is required, of course, but also because it’s the right thing to do. My old library had space issues and in my new library (we are renovating), I have to make sure all kids can get to what they want and need. 

Anyway, it was interesting to think about how to make my website as accessible as possible. I found it very annoying for the 30 seconds or so that I spent on a website with the graphics turned off. I think I would be a very angry person with disabilities most of the time. Some of the text disappeared because it was fine on the background graphic, but was hard to read without it. I spent the next two days frustrating & challenging myself to figure out how to add the alternative text to the graphics on my website. I am using iWeb and it turns out that this product does not support alternative text. I think because it is very much a consumer product and not intended for a market that has to think about all this. An internet search turned up a third party program that is meant to work with iWeb to fix just that problem. It is free. I fought with it for a while because there were very few instructions (yay, YouTube!), but finally conquered it. Woot, woot!

I added a video to my website. It uploads just fine to the apple server, but refuses to upload to the ovaltinedream domain. Once I pulled it off, it uploaded just fine. So, there is something else to pursue. I think it is because the file was from iTunes. It was a video project my daughter and I worked on in the spring of 2009. The original iMovie files were deleted once I burned the DVD and added it to iTunes. I think I have it parked out on YouTube as well. I will look for it. Maybe the ovaltinedream domain will like a link to YouTube better.

Reflective Journal, Module Seven

This week has been a little of this and a little of that. 

Sunday: reviewed class material to see what’s coming this week

Monday: worked on iWeb; Tori’s site up - jealous even if she did have a head start through a different class

Tuesday: called and got the ball rolling for domain through MHTC; expected to be available by the end of the day; continued to work in iWeb; domain up, but much frustration trying to get the FTP end of things to work

Wednesday: more frustration in the morning as FTP still not cooperating; evening success through WebDesk which is basically a drop and drag way of uploading; learned to save to a file so I could use WebDesk

Thursday: updates on both domains; learning more about iWeb through practicing uploads; responded to a few posts - so many ideas and ways to present the required information - very cool; huge frustration levels of Tuesday and Wednesday are gone as I have learned to do what I need to do - it would be nice if I actually understood some of it... 

And I am officially out of week! (except for tweaking and modifying and editing the rest of my reflective journal entries and upgrading the descriptions of the items on the learning showcase page... geez!)


Reflective Journal, Module Six

CSE: Custom Search Engine. Interesting tool. Undecided how I can apply it to my current teaching position. A lot of the things we talk about, I don’t know how they can be applied to my little students. Also, the way library is structured at this point, I do not have their little hands on the technology. All that is taken care of by the classroom teacher now that LouAnn has become Technology only. (LouAnn used to teach in the computer lab, but was pulled to work for the Technology Department. They needed her, but as she is not licensed to teach, it was a legal problem as well. Now the teachers teach in the computer lab, each to his or her own skill and comfort level.)

As far as my own teaching goes, I need to stop identifying roadblocks and start identifying things I can do regardless. If I have time for this class, I will certainly have time to do some things on my own that will make my teaching better. These last two weeks, I have determined that my job is not just with the kids, but with everyone in my building(s). To make a bigger impact on the children, I need to help the adults as well. I can do that not so much by “teaching”, but by providing tools I am discovering and links to ideas that they might find a way to incorporate into their classrooms. 

Reflective Journal, Module Five

“Become the thing that is replacing you.” Uncertain of the source or wording, but this thought has been echoing in my head for a couple weeks now. How can I use what I am learning to save my job? If it is perceived that I “just read books to kids”, Rachael (my principal) and I are going to have problems justifying even my 50% position. I need to add value to what I do. I need to be more than appreciated by the grown ups in the building, I need to be essential.

This week’s activity was a surprise! Loved it after I was done, hated it almost immediately as I was doing it. My own fault for getting cocky. It was about being a good searcher of information and I went down in flames - at first. The directions said to allow 3 hours and because I am “a trained professional,” that seemed too long. It took at least 2 hours and I cannot imagine how gifted a middle schooler must be to get through it  in 3 hours!

I learned that too much confidence can be as much a problem as too little in terms of making progress toward a goal. I did learn quickly to stop banging my head against the wall and JUST LEARN from the lesson. Once I got out of my own way, I loved learning new ways to get at information that will help me find and evaluate internet resources. So, this week was a total win! Life lesson: let yourself learn. Course lesson: much online information is buried, but there are ways to get at it. Participation this week: anything is better than last week, but really, this was a very good week.

Reflective Journal, Module Four

Tempted to say “Arg!” and leave it at that. We switched to teacher mode on the Moodle and were supposed to make a survey or quiz for our groups. I learned several things this week, most of them related indirectly to class. Perhaps the several things can be summed up with one word: focus. I lost focus this week and it turns out that reading posts and thinking about them is NOT the same as participating. (Duh.) I didn’t have the confidence to just pick a topic and make a quiz or survey, so I put it off until it was WAY too late. I let the busy-ness of home and school distract me from my coursework. 

Reflective Journal, Module Three

Moodle intro. Feeling a little overwhelmed by yet another new website, login and password. Moodle seems similar enough to Stout’s D2L package. I was able to get around and get the assignment done and do see that it is a good tool to know about. I think it’s free to use, which I assume D2L is not. If I were to use this forum for my own course, then I would clearly need to pursue training. One week (or two weeks, after next week’s module) is not going to do it. Clearly, our class is an intro to many available tools, so it’s all good. 

Facilitating a discussion was a little freaky for me, but it was a good opportunity to work on the value-added responses that are modeled for us and that we are supposed to be using in our regular posts/responses back over in D2L-land. The printed copy of the rubric helps.

Reflective Journal, Module Two

This was a strange and difficult week. Our gorgeous Monday was the day we put Anja down. She was 27 and was hurting. Dennis kindly gave me a pass for the day, although it took two or three days to really get sorted out emotionally.

Regarding class, things certainly ramped up, but it was mostly all within familiar territory (with a few false starts due to ego). We learned about Diigo, which seems to me an Evernote for bookmarks, except you share them with others in groups you join. Called “social bookmarking”. I found one to share with the group, and I added several that I’d like to go back to at some point.

Once sorted out, I quickly caught up with the readings and work and my participation was okay, but still need to refer to the rubric during the self-evals. I printed it so I can also refer to it mid-week instead of after the fact.

(11/17/11: I didn’t make notes about adding Google Reader to my life. I think it was this week. I first heard of RSS feed readers at WEMTA several years ago, tried one through Outlook and didn’t like it. As there was no real purpose to my blog reading then, it is little wonder that it didn’t work out so well. As my reading is a lot more purposeful now, I think the Reader is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I had a couple blogs I read regularly that I had bookmarked. Once I added a few for this class, the Reader was the only way to go and I like it very much. I have a couple things to learn about making it more useful, but for the moment it’s a total win.)

Reflective Journal, Module One

This was icebreaking week. Although it doesn’t seem like a large group of students, we are a diverse lot. Icebreaking activities in an online course seem like a very good idea. It is a good way to for us to get to know one another, but also a great way to test our skills within the D2L teaching space. To that end, I believe I met my learning objectives this week. I skipped the orientation information and likely fumbled around a lot more than I would have if I had taken the time to go through it. I foolishly thought I could remember how everything works after having been away from it for five years. (I can’t believe it’s been that long since I last took a class online from Stout!) So, I learned that I need to follow instructions and slow down a bit. I think I participated well enough, but the quality of my responses could use some tweaking. The rubric is very clear and I need to keep that in mind. Although not the most active member of our group, I think I held my own. Not too bad for a formerly shy person who doesn’t often say much in a regular classroom. :-/


© Deborah Kabler 2013