October Spotlight

    October Spotlight

Forging Ahead in an Online Learning Environment

Mr. Felker teaches 8^th grade social studies at Massac Junior High School.  He and other junior high teachers spent part of last year and most of the summer recreating their curriculum and instruction.  This effort culminated in a new online learning environment.  Mr. Felker created a series of web pages that integrate many of the Google Apps for Education as well as other instructional applications to house all of his instructional resources for his U.S. History course.  He not only added text once found (often outdated) in the student textbooks, but he also added many multimedia rich resources that this online learning environment makes possible. 

When asked about this project, Mr. Felker shared some of his initial goals in creating this online curriculum.

Goals:

1. Develop a method that places the teacher in the position to develop Learning Targets that allow the student to select the best method for them to master the target.
2. Provide parents, students, fellow teachers, and administration with 100% of the teachable content material.
3. Supply parents with daily access to student homework, lesson content, and Learning Targets via the digital Remind system.
4. Promote student development of computer literacy to allow students to become more competitive in higher-education and the workplace.
5. Enable students to have greater control of previewing and reviewing content material by allowing all stages of a lesson to be accessible by the student.
6. Create a method of instruction that pushes the teacher to continuously improve teaching strategies and make immediate improvements to lessons rather than waiting until the next year.

Mr. Felker was also quick to discuss the daily routine in his classroom.  He wanted to point out that he doesn’t simply hand the students a computer and sit back and relax.  Mr. Felker shared some of the daily activities of his class with this new online learning platform:

1. Each day, or sometimes two days, has its own stand-alone webpage with all content students are expected to learn. This includes secondary source articles, primary sources, geographic maps, graphs with data, or other materials necessary for a proper lesson.
2. Students have access to several minutes worth of approved videos that reinforce the daily lesson. Most videos are never viewed in class but serve as bonus material for students wishing to delve deeper into the concept on their own or who need additional support outside of the classroom.
3. Core discussion questions are embedded into the website so students may preview and review the question once asked or discussed in the classroom.  This also enables them to search for proper responses without needing to take time to distract students by repeating the question verbally multiple times.
4. Homework has been virtually abolished.  While it still remains in some regards, all homework is no longer expected to be completed outside of school hours.  Assignments are now built around higher lever questions or challenges that the teacher can then monitor progress in person.  This reduces confusion and increases student interdependence on the available sources.
   
   
5. Assignments are distributed via Google Classroom, which digitally assigns work, and allows the student AND teacher to monitor progress from their own independent computers.  This also allows the teacher to identify students who are not progressing and may need intervention.  An added bonus is that lost assignments are now impossible, and partially completed homework can be graded if the student is non-compliant in submitting their work.
6. Many traditional assessments are given digitally through Google Forms, which allows for faster data collection, resulting in faster data analysis, and as a result faster adaptation and accommodation for student weaknesses.
7. Many parents and students receive daily Remind system messages that contain information on assignments or the complete lesson.  This allows students who miss class the option to complete assignments and lessons at home or on the road so they do not fall behind.
8. Some parents and tutors in our district have signed up in a fake Google Classroom class that has been created, enabling them to receive copies of all assignments used in class.
9. Students take advantage of the Homeroom period and sometimes their Recess period to catch up on any missing assignments, or simply explore the additional content provided in each lesson.

As we discussed some of the challenges and benefits of this project, Mr. Felker shared what seems to be the most significant advantage of this learning platform, which is the ability to monitor individual student progress.  Mr. Felker currently has 139 students in his social studies course.  Before he created this learning platform, it simply wasn’t possible to monitor student learning at this level of fidelity.  Through the use of Google Classroom and Google Docs, he can now monitor students down to the specific notes that they are taking in real-time during class.  Also with this technology, he now has the ability to correct student misunderstanding on an individual level as it occurs rather than waiting for formative or summative assessments to identify them.  Mr. Felker went on to identify other positive outcomes from this online learning platform:

1. Students with Individualized Learning Plans are given greater discretion when working with modified assignments and assessments.
2. Students who work at a slower pace, or need additional help have all resources at all times to help them search for correct responses.
3. Students who work at a faster pace have the option of exploring additional content and more challenging assignments when possible.
4. Instruction of content is happening at a much faster rate than in the previous years.  As of October 15th, students are roughly one month ahead of the previous year.  This is opening new options for the remaining three quarters, such as a non-fiction text to be read in late October. 
5. The digital nature of the class is allowing the teacher to adapt lessons immediately for each class.  Reflection on successes and failures enables the teacher to make changes to the lessons without impacting preset copies or textbook materials.
6. Thus far, paper consumption has only equaled 142 pieces of paper, saving the district valuable resources.
7. Although the amount of time spent developing the digital classroom is quite a lot, the courses can be replicated in seconds.  This will take much less time in the future than traditional teaching methods, allowing for more time spent analyzing data, improving instruction, and developing meaningful intervention strategies.  This also allows for the classroom to no longer be limited by the year or decade the curriculum was purchased, meaning Social Science can now move with the technology and demands the world has for our future learners.

When asked about how long it took to develop this online platform, Mr. Felker estimated three hours per lesson.  When I looked through his curriculum, I counted over 95 lessons (285 hours) already made and ready for student use.  This is quite an undertaking, but the benefit to student learning is well worth the work.  As a former social studies teacher, I can appreciate how beneficial up-to-date content and multimedia resources are to this subject matter.  Mr. Felker even pointed out the textbook that he used as a resource last year was written well before his current students were even born.  Having recently completed college coursework, I can also appreciate how closely aligned this instructional setting is to most college courses today.  If you would like to know more about this project, please email Mr. Felker: tfelker@massac.org