Week 5 Reflections

My TPI results reflect the way in which I realisitcally know that I teach, but not necessarily how I wish to teach.  As an Advanced Placement teacher nearly everything I do in my class revolves around preparing students for the AP test.  I believe that if I didn't teach the class in a way that best prepares students for the test, then I would doing them a disservice.  Students enroll in the class with the intention of taking an AP class that culminates in the AP test.  Consequently, most of what I do on a daily basis involves the transmission of knowledge as my TPI scores reflect.

However, philosophically I am very interested in equipping students with the skills they need to evaluate the world around them like a social scienctist would.  I want to instill in students the skills that they need to think for themselves.  I do try to acknowledge and work within each student's developmental zone--hence my higher score in the apprenticeship category.  Yet, I would like students to use these skills to greater social ends.  Thus, I was shocked at that social reform was my lowest scoring category.  It raised my awareness about how far I have drifted from my intial beliefs about education. 

For online teachers, I would suspect that their transmission and maybe their developmental scores would be higher when they reflected on their online teaching.  It seems to me that online teaching would be more centered on student mastery of the content and their increasing ability to apply the content.  I also think that the nurturing component of the teacher's survey would decrease.  Perhaps this is just me, but I think it would be much easier to disregard the feelings or emotional progress of a student who one never has to see in person.  I think that this behavior almost always be unconscious, so perhaps by bringing it into one's consciousnes, it could be combatted.

Week 4 Reflection

This week I saw in action one of the principles that we have read so much about--good online instructional design is largely good f2f instructional design.  When reading the INACOL standards, I was struck by how many of their recommendations apply to f2f instruction as well.  In reviewing the various examples, however, I did see that some practices that might work in a f2f setting just don't cut it online.  For example, a particularly dynamic instructor can deliver a fifteen- to twenty-minute lecture and maintain student engagement.  Yet, if that same lecture is simply transcribed and placed online, student engagement will wane much more quickly.  So, I suppose I now really see how it is more than just taking good instructional design and placing it online.  This is a lesson that I certainly will keep in mind as we design our online unit plans.


In reviewing the excellent examples of instructional design, I was inspired and impressed by what online schooling can offer.  Looking at, for instance, FVS's online history program (this amazing virtual game), I realize that online schooling can offer students learning opportunities that f2f instruction cannot.  I entered this course believing that online schooling would deprive students of certain opportunities and benefits associated with f2f schooling without realizing that online schooling had something to offer that f2f did not.  This week opened my eyes to the flaws in this assumption.

Week 3 Reflection

Online schools are much further along than expected, especially the for-profits.  Advocates of public schooling beware!

Week 2 Reflection

I want my child to be treated like a person and actually interact with lots of other persons.  Will being a virtual student render my child less of a person?