Week Two Journal Reflection

Module two was on emerging practices of online assessment. The information from this module was very informative. One of things that was covered in this module was student-centered learning. Student-centered learning is when the focus of learning is on the needs of the students. In this module we completed a reading interactive inventory learning object to see if the focus on the way that we teach is student-centered or teacher-centered. After completing the survey I found that I was student-centered.

The required readings for this module focused on blogs. I found the readings to be very informative. One of the readings was the Benefits of Cooperative Learning in Weblog networks. I found this article very interesting. There were some really good points made in the article. We needed to post to the discussion board on advantages and disadvantages in using blogs for educational purposes. There can be many advantages and disadvantages. So far I think the class is having a very thorough discussion on the advantages and disadvantages.

I have created a blog before for another class that I took, but for this course I will be posting weekly journal reflections to this blog. I really have not created a detailed blog, so this will be a good learning experience for me. In the future I hope to teach online and learning how to set up a blog and learning about the advantages and disadvantages of using a blog in education will help me in the future.

Interview Posting

One of our assigned tasks for the course as an icebreaker activity was to select a student and condut an interview about them. Once the interview was complete we needed to post the interview in the disucssion board for the course. Below is the interview that I completed on Jennifer Jenkins.

Jennifer has one son who is 17 and a senior. She is almost a full-blooded Swede which is unusual nowadays and would love to go to Sweden some day. She grew up on a farm in Iowa and would love to go back to the Midwest to live.

This is Jennifer's fourth year teaching business and computer classes at Lebanon High School, a city school that is over 50% minority. Prior to teaching at Lebanon High School she taught two years as a long-term sub while she was working on her certification. Besides taking classes she is also busy teaching one evening at the local Career and Technical Center, tutor a home-bound student, and teaching online accounting class. At the high school she is the FBLA adviser and runs the school store.

Before she started teaching, Jennifer worked in the business world for over 15 years in marketing research and project management. She received an undergraduate degree from Iowa State in AgBusiness and a Masters degree in Education from Temple University. This is her third class in the certification program.

Below is the interview that Jennifer completed about me.

Heather is an online learning support specialist at a technical college in Wisconsin. She is working on her masters degree in Career and Technical Education and plans to take all courses required for the online instructor certification. After working on her masters degree, Heather's goal is to teach, preferably online.

On a more personal level, Heather is married and has a chocolate lab named Dakota. She plays volleyball a couple of times each week.

E-Portfolio for E-Learning and Online Teaching Certificate

Listed below is the link to my E-Portfolio for the E-Learning and Online Teaching Certificate. I am going to use the same e-portfolio page for all the courses that I will be taking in the certificate. For this class anything that will need to posted to an e-portfolio will be listed under the following link.

http://pokorskys.googlepages.com/home