Module 6 assignment


Module 6 assignment: Class Road Map/ RLO

My current classroom is definitely not an online classroom, and to call it blended would probably be stretching it a bit as well.  With our school’s move to 1:1 I knew I needed to make some serious changes in order to keep up with the direction not only our district but education in general is going.  One of the biggest reasons I enrolled in this program was so that I could step up my class’ online presence. One of the big ideas that I took from this module was how important creating a culture of engagement, comfort, and collaboration is to a successful blended classroom or even a single online assignment. 

Learning Management systems:

My classes, and school have chosen to rely heavily on google as our online platform for… pretty much everything.  I started with a google classroom, and then quickly switched to a google site for both of my classes.  Although maybe not considered a Learning Management System, as mentioned in the resources this week, I think it does a pretty good job along with the help of eSchool plus and Atlas programs of managing our online content for the class.

My google site is the most important online presence I have for my class as of now.  Here is the link for my google site for biology and anatomy classes respectively:



Although they aren’t course maps per say, they do have the entire course mapped out on the google calendar as well as the units in order on the left.  Using the calendar, students and parents can access copies of all presentations, lecture notes, assignments and labs at any time during the course.  This works really well for students who are absent or those students that are unorganized and lose material easily. 

Another google program I utilize along with the site is google community.  For specific assignments, or extra opportunities I set up a specific community for that assignment.  This allows me to monitor student discussions, questions, or assess engagement easily.  I really like google communities as almost a wiki for getting students engaged in online discussion threads. 

Class road Map:

I utilize two sources to create my course road map.  These are available to students from day one on our google site to set expectations and learning goals for the year.  The first source is my syllabus.  The course syllabi show the students what to expect from the course, set norms, and map out how they will earn their grades.


The more specific course road map comes from Atlas.  Biology is a district wide course and I was fortunate to help create our online “course map” utilizing Next Gen Science Standards as our main focus and Atlas as our online platform.  The easiest way for you to view our atlas without signing up was to take a few screenshots for you to see what our course roadmap looks like.


The place where I think our discussion can help is that our document isn’t extremely student friendly right now.  I look forward to hearing how our road map could be more student friendly and a document that students would actually utilize.  As of now, I don’t feel students get as much use out of this document as they do our google site.

Thank you,

Jim

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