On-line learning week 4

I know that I have skipped week three - but I feel that I need more time to reflect on that topic in order to post effectively. Therefore I am going to move on to week 4 to talk about formative assessments. I'm not exactly sure what the author's point was to the article about using web2.0 tools for formative assessments. A formative assessment can only be successful if the teacher uses it properly. This has so much more to do with the teacher than the tool they are using. A blog can easily be as effective as a written journal if the teacher takes the time to comment and provide feedback. I have known many teachers who just mark down that the students turned in their notebook - how is this effective formative assessment? A good teacher will make use of the tools provided to give substantial feedback and allow their students to grow and improve. A teacher can use discussion posts, google-docs or blogs to evaluate and comment on writing. They can use clickers or google forms to get a quick sense on what the class understands (or doesn't) to determine whether or not they need to reteach or which concepts they need to review. Pixton could be used to evaluate understanding as well. Each of these tools can be revised by the students based on teacher feedback in order to improve.

On-line learning Week 2

Facilitating Online Learning Week 1 post

I love the convience of on-line learning. With 3 kids and a full time job I appreciate not having to spend the extra time commuting to/from class. When I was taking classes at Oshkosh over the last 2 years, I would regularly spend at least 2 hours a week in the car. This is time that could be much better spent:). The biggest drawback to me has been the classroom interaction. My library classes at Oshkosh contained most of the same students each term (similar to this cohort) and we became really close because of the chatting that takes place before class and during the breaks. We didn't have any group work, but I still feel closer to those people than I do to my current classmates. I also feel that students are more likely to participate when sitting in front of the instructor. I think most people find it much harder to stay quiet when the teacher is right there looking at you. Overall, on-line learning was the best fit for me at this point in time but I don't know if I would chooses it over face to face classes if my circumstances were different.

Stats By Any Other Name - Week 5

Okay - I'm almost caught up. I don't know why I find it so hard to keep up on the blog posts. It's not that I don't think about the class, and I certainly get my other work finished on time. I just seem to have some sort of mental block when it comes to actually typing these posts. I have the same problem with my other blog http://mrsdanen.blogspot.com/ where I was supposed to write reviews of the books that I have been reading this year. I challenged myself to read 100 books. I have currently read 67, but if you looked at my blog you would think that I stalled at number 27 in September. I have read the books and I certainly have opinions on them, why does it seem to be so hard to complete that next step?

Anyway, about stats....This week we were looking at Google trends. I actually had a hard time with this assignment. For some reason it seems that google trends is getting blocked by my school's filtering system. I kept getting an error message every time I tried to do a search with google trends. Luckily my group members were able to share their screens with me on our google hangout so I could see what they were talking about. We were also supposed to look at a number of data resources. Talk about information overload...Most of these sites were full of information, some usful and some not, but were hard to search. It really felt like being buried in a sea of facts and figures (so much data, so little time). I found the information to be reliable, but I also found it hard to find specific data that might be helpful to me.

Stats By Any Other Name - Week 4

This was another one of those weeks where the terminology got in my way. I was confused about standard scores and z-scores. I thought that the standard score was the number on the table axis, and that the z-score was the number that you would find in the table itself. This would explain why my group was getting the same answers for the percentage questions, but different z-scores. Once we got this straitened out everything made a lot more sense. Again this week was more about the interpretation of the data, which is a lot more interesting than just crunching the numbers.

I found the videos on Bill Tancer to be intriguing, if not just a little bit frightening. It's amazing to me how much information can be gained just from analyzing peoples search inquiries. As long as the information remains anonymous, I think people should be able to use anything that's out there. If my personal information starts to get shared, that's when I feel it crosses over into an invasion of privacy.

Stats By Any Other Name - Week 3

This week our groups were supposed to start creating our own survey. We had a number of ideas, among which were the surveys that Zac and I were both working on for our respective districts. Zac's was smaller in scope (fewer questions and fewer people involved) and we thought it would be easier to analyze once we got the results. This is the part of stats. that is actually interesting, being able to interpret the data once you have it. It's funny that none of my other stats. classes in college really focused on this aspect. Isn't this the main reason that we do surveys in the first place?

Stats By Any Other Name Week 2

I'm not bad at math, I've actually always done pretty well. This class however, has been a struggle. It's not that the work is overly difficult, or the amount overwhelming. I find myself having a hard time with definitions. Words that I have used often with a fair amount of certainty as to their meanings, no longer have the same definitions. Take for instance the word "sample", I had no idea there were so many different types of samplesm and the word "statistic" more often I have actually meant "parameter" when I used this word. Once I can wrap my mind around the definitions, the actual math hasn't been that hard. Having said that, it still has to be my least favorite subject so far. I still think that's why they tried to disguise the name by calling it "Decision Making Using Data Collection & Analysis" and hoping that none of us would notice.