Part+1

Part One, Introduction. Entry 1: The Tale of An Epic Journey

A long time ago a 9th grade science teacher told a 14 year old girl that her Science Fair Project was going to State. That was the beginning of an epic journey to become a teacher. As with most journeys, detours were taken, methods changed, and changed again; lecturing became discussing and desks became group tables; lesson plans written on yellow legal pads morphed into word documents. Concepts and theories were challenged and readjusted to meet evolving goals, but the biggest change was yet to come. A year and ½ ago, the journey took the teacher up a very high mountain where new ideas and new skills challenged the teacher to climb higher and higher until at the summit she emerged, //changed forever into a 21st century learning convert//. And she was soon to be.... //an online student teache//r, ready to use all those new skills and knowledge, ready to cast off the old ways and walk boldly into cyber-space. The teacher was me, and the journal was mine. Please join me now as I take the final steps, looking backward in reflection and forward in anticipation. //Not yet knowing the meaning of life but continuing to learn the meaning of teaching.//

I dedicate the documentation of this final part of my journey to my classmates who have shared their wisdom with me on a daily basis, and to my facilitators who have given me the courage to find my own way. //Because this is a __working__ portfolio my classmates and my facilitator are my intended audience. It is also for myself, to use as reference for developing my presentation portfolio.//

I hope that this journal will help me make the most of my student teaching experience and that it will be a reflection of my learning and personal growth as a potential online facilitator. To that end, I will faithfully record both my successes and less than successful attempts at this new endeavor.

Regardless of where, when, or in what venue I teach, there are constant goals that will guide me. In addition to these personal goals, I will incorporate the standards of my specialty, The Arizona High School Science Standards (  click ) and the standards of my newly acquired specialty, The Arizona Technology Standards for Education. My journal would not be a realistic representation of my journey if I did not utilize a few of the skills I have acquired during my eighteen months with VHS. I will apply some of those skills to present my portfolio so that it is not only a record of teaching skills but also technological know how. In doing this, I will share resources from f2f classes I have recently taught, classes I have developed for this course, a course I am in the process of developing, and documentations from my practicum class as well. Technology: Wiki, advanced word processing, wiki links, external links, images an Xtra normal movie and maybe a video if I have time.

Part One, Student Teaching Course Description. Entry 2: What Will My Class Be Like?

For weeks I had speculated on the class I would soon be a part of; would it be a subject I knew well, what would my mentor teacher be like, would she tell me to just forget it because I would never make a decent online teacher because I hit the wrong button and made everyone's work disappear? I was as nervous as I had been the very first time I did student teaching f2f, in 1965. Then one day up it came in the weekly lesson. I would be student teaching in an __Honors Anatomy and Physiology Class.__ Cool Stuff! I've taught this before, but I'm still scared stiff. I'm going to the VHS catalog and read the course overview to get a "heads up" on this class.

The first line of the description had me //hooked//, "How can the results of an EKG indicate heart pathology." "How does the histology of a normal lung compare to that of a lung with emphysema?" This is just the kind of class I would love to teach, lots of practical applications. Anatomy can be sooo boring if you don't make it relevant. Then it gets good. They get to use Jlab! I imagine that students that like Life Sciences are going to be thrilled to find out they were going to be using the Jlab NHI microscope, virtual version of course. Wow, I'm impressed.

Now to the syllabus where I hope to learn everything else I need to know about how the class really works. I'm a little disappointed because the syllabus is just a list of weekly topics to be covered. Oh dear, I hope the students don't run the other way. A few days later I actually visited the real class and found the overview to be quite accurate. The class was relevant, a lot of hard work, and a lot of fun. And the syllabus thing? All the information that any student might ever need was in the Course Documents//,// (click) the //Start Up Pages.// 

Although the overview did stress that the students //would// be working very hard and that they //would// be responsible for regular virtual attendance and that they //would// learn to work collaboratively I'm not sure that any overview can really prepare a student for the individual responsibility of an online class.  Students need to be given every tool possible for success and this in my mind includes a technology orientation before the course starts. After that the facilitator will be, hopefully, keeping track of students needs and concerns and guide them along the road to on-learning .