Group Project

Although our group was the only group with 4 people in 3 completely different locations - NY, Seoul, and Sao Paulo - we were finally able to put everything together. It was not easy, to say the least, but along the way, I learned a lot about online learning environment. The pro was obvious; we were allowed to communicate freely with many tools such as the Instant Messenger (for our synchronous cyber meetings) and Google Docs (collaborate). On the other hand, we had difficult agreeing on few things because our interests were different. Additionally, being in different time zones with different schedule made it that much harder to fully collaborate together. I felt that the time zone variation significantly matters more than the actual distance (a student in FL and in NY would better collaborate than one in NY and the other in Beijing).

My job was the technical or the "fun" and engaging instructional design for a subject that can be deemed boring or difficult for ESL elementary students. I think "edutainment" combined with the right curriculum has great potential. Specifically, the social network educational games, if created right with the right set of supplemental materials (e.g. e-books) would make learning more "fun" and effective for younger students who are usually turned off by traditional learning methods. These are same students accustomed to growing up with the web 2.0 tools, smartphones, SNS; for us to expect them to learn like we did is unrealistic. I'm going to continue to design a gamed-based learning system that can be used in classrooms.

Week 7 Reflection

As I began to think about creating a unit for an online course, few things come to my mind. The key I suppose, is to make a course that can caters to various types of students no matter what background they are from. In addition, not everyone has access to all types of technologies, such as smartphones or laptops. My biggest worry is how to make the course "fun" and engaging while having just as powerful contents. There are guidelines such as iNACOL that we can follow, but to be truly effective in class, I think they need more than meeting minimum requirements. For example, although I love this class, I'm not sure if it'd be just as effective for typical K-12 students. From my experience, I just don't think students would participate more than the minimum requirement (i.e. number of posts per week). Not all students engage in multiple discussions on a discussion-based board online. It'd be the biggest challenge to have an online course both interesting and academic.

Week 6 Reflection

Looking at the two schools that I researched, Alabama ACCESS and Chicago Virtual Charter School (CVCS), my view of them has changed slightly. If I had to change anything on Google spreadsheet, it would be student-student interaction. Although these two schools are probably better than many other virtual schools or courses (especially given that blended learning allows f2f interaction in classrooms), they still don't allow much social interaction between the students. I definitely think that social interaction is just as, if not more, important than academic learning especially K-8 level.

In CVCS blended learning model, students focus on learning primarily with their parents at home using K-12 Inc. curriculum. There's hardly any communication at all with their peers. They look through web interactive lecture pages with adults and take assessments. In school, they are more likely to interact with their student friends, but it is limited to "playing" with each other or spending time with the teachers to ask questions. I'm a firm believer that learning together is very important skill to learn at a young age - learning about how others think will help them develop creativity and know what it's like to think outside the box. I have personally looked at K-12 Inc curriculum and it looks fantastic, but schools should teach social skills as well.

On the other hand ACCESS is mostly about taking a class, mostly advanced level or AP courses, for students who do not have resources at his/her school. As a result, there's hardly much student-student interaction, but many are high level students wanting to take extra classes. From my own experience, AP classes were lecture-style classes; consequently, I don't think students would lose out much, in term of student-student interaction, by taking real-time interactive videoconferencing (IVC) courses. AP courses are primarily designed to help students pass the AP exam to get an advanced college credit, so the motivation for actively following the class is already there. However, I still believe students would benefit by having greater student-student interaction (e.g. using an interactive board to discuss sample AP test Q&As).

I believe the two programs are headed in the right direction. Maybe it's because American students have lagged far behind many advanced countries in terms of scores and that is why more "academics" are in place, but I believe it will only result in lack of social skills and creativity if cyber schools don't start making changes for the better.