Week 5 Reflection

This week was a little different for me. Because I had already responded to the threads on the Ning website, I did not spend nearly the amount of time I had the past weeks on there. I did continue to read what others had written, but since many of us share the same thoughts on many of the topics, I did not post commments to everyone. What I did spend time on this week was read Disrupting Class and trying to figure out what to do my final project on. As for the book, I have to say that it was just an ok read for me. Maybe it is because I feel that we have read so much during this program that I have sort of developed a just read and get it over with attitude. I did like the models presented in the book and felt more comfortable with what they actually meant after Patrick talked about them in class. I also liked how Christensen addressed all the comments that are often made about why students have difficulties or why technology is not the answer. He they rebuted the comments with evidence that seemed relevant. The style in which he writes is very easy for me to read so sometimes I think I get reading and then have to go back because even though I read the words, I did not get meaning out of them. One page that really stuck out to me was 111. Christensen talks about the effectiveness of student-centric online technology when it comes to grading and feedback. Sometimes a student can turn in an assignment or test and not get feedback about it for awhile because teachers need the time to get it corrected and make all the appropriate comments. By this time, the student may just take the assignment and not gain any insight as to what was done correctly/incorrectly because of the lapse in time. Online technology would allow for instant feedback in some cases because the time for grading would be eliminated. However, this would limit your assessments to basic true/false, multiple choice, or fill in the blank. The constructed response that requires actual writing would still need to be looked over by a teacher. I can say I definitely relate to this topic right now because I am grading state reports. I have 65 reports to get through and it so so time consuming. The students turned them in last week and I have about 20 left to go. I always hope they look over and read all of my comments after I take the time to check them all. But yet, I am sure some don't due to the time issue.
This week I am going to research video conferencing since it is my topic for my final project. I am going to zone in on skype, but yet look at video conferencing in general. I also want to create a Voki and finish Disrupting Class.