Justin K. Reeve – EDTECH PortfolioMiscellaneous
522: The Importance of Student Reflection
In an online classroom, there are two primary written reflection tools: blogs and forums. A forum is ideal for collaborating in a group, and following prompted topics. For example, a history instructor teaching a unit on the U.S. Civil War may post weekly discussion questions like: Why do you think it took hundreds of years […]
522: E-Learning Courseware Tools
An online classroom offers more provisions to use web-based tools than a face-to-face classroom might. For Weber Online, we are using the Utah Electronic High School’s (EHS) curriculum, but our plan is to “update” it to model better practices, and Web 2.0, which have gotten increasingly sophisticated, will undoubtedly play an important role in this. Modern […]
522: Five Challenges to Online Education
We are gearing up to launch Weber Online, our school district’s new web site for fully online courses. We’ve been using Moodle as a hybrid learning environment in our junior and high schools for a few years now, and the online courses will use the same system. With the assistance of a counselor, Weber School […]
522: A Glog About TinyChat
TinyChat is a web-based collaboration tool that integates video, audio, and text-based chat, plus some features such as collaborative whiteboarding and multi-user document authoring, similar to Google Docs. One of my gripes about Skype has always been that it doesn’t allow multi-video chat sessions. TinyChat is a good solution for those who require this, but […]
522: Online Faculty Professional Development
As online education continues to grow, it is increasingly necessary that faculty members are trained in the appropriate instructional practices. Adjunct faculty, with their diverse skills and backgrounds, comprise the fastest-growing group of higher education employees. McDaniel & Shaw (2010) emphasize the importance of a focus on evaluating teacher performance and determining if instructors are […]
522: Shifting Toward Best Practices in Online Learning
Utah Senate Bill 65 was recently passed, which establishes a statewide online education network, where students can earn credits from different schools. As a result, our attention has shifted toward fully online courses and how we can implement them, and how we can improve our existing hybrid courses. There are a good number of teachers […]
522: A Quality Learning Experience
Halfway through my first semester of the EDTECH program at Boise State, I realized that I was going to have a high-quality online learning experience, because online teaching is a chunk of what the program is about. The professors practice what they preach. The two ingredients for me that have made the program a success […]
532: A Theoretical Model for Virtual Worlds in Weber School District
I’d like to implement virtual worlds in Weber School District. Hopefully, I’m in a position to actually steer things in this direction, and make it happen and get beneficial results. My concern with the implementation is that Second Life itself has a minimum age of 16. Great for high school kids, but it leaves out […]
532: Making a Better World Through Games
In February 2010, Jane McGonigal gave a TED Talk on how gaming is not only a prominent feature of modern society, but an absolutely essential one. She cites statistics that demonstrate people become engaged in games more than any other activity, and follows up with an argument that has been echoed by educators interested in […]