Week 4 of CED 550

The focus on this week was student-centered online learning, differentiation, authentic assessments, and rubrics. We needed to create a Student Centered Lesson with Differentiation, Authentic Assessment, and a Rubric. I chose to create a lesson on Charles' Law using online lab simulations.

As a science teacher, I believe that students need to experience the content that we are discussing. Labs are an important piece of the learning process. While working on this module I was glad that I had success finding a lab replacement. The online lab simulation was a good replacement and it allows the students to kinesthetically explore the concepts.

This week in class was also my chance to facilitate both a synchronous and asynchronous discussion on blended learning. Here is the 15 minute presentation that I gave on Blended Learning. Here is the topic for my asynchronous discussion. I felt like both the synchronous and asynchronous discussions went well. I was glad that I chose to incorporate a video into the discussion and it seemed liked the topic was well received by my colleagues.

I think I could have improved my synchronous lesson by utilizing a reporter instead of having all of the students write on the whiteboard at once. I found this to be overwhelming and I do not think that the students were able to read all of the good comments that their colleagues posted. In the future, I would also like to use the poll features that Eluminate offers. It is a great way to get anonymous feedback from the students and it also provides great discussion points.