Week Four Reflection

Hi All,

As I mentioned in an earlier post I do feel bad that I was behind quite a bit. It is 100% my fault and things are looking better. Just got a paper back from a journal (third revision) and it looks as if it is going to get the OK in the next few months here. I am surprised how long it took to develop, write, and get this far. Basically a two year project now - but may have made it.

Tomorrow the sports season will also wrap up. I coach the running team, and tomorrow we have a 21 km race - I will also run, so have been working hard with the running team and my own training. I like to stay with the pace of my runners, but recently we have had a lot of luck and their youth is getting me (good for them). So, I'll be able to focus so much more.

This week I have been able to take a look at the Virtual High School, and a lot of the other schools that you folks are investigating.

I gave two presentations this week to my supervisors - gaining permissions to trial a unit, for a project aimed at this course, hence; I wanted to take a look at several school practices. In the proposal (the presentations) I am looking at the potential for future course design (virtual options) but am thinking small (to pilot). In a one week, one unit course I would like my students to investigate "People that Matter" in looking at a specific topic. One group is studying different nations so I want them to get to know people from the nations (i.e. Rwanda - who were the people involved in the 1957-1994 Genocide). In the other group they are researching technologies, so they should come to grips with the people involved in the timeline of the technology (i.e. if the technology is computers - what roles did: George Boole, Claude Shannon, Tim Burners Lee, and Bill Gates, play).

I met first to determine which courses would be future targets, and then met again to present a proposal to get permissions to teach from my desk for a week. I suggested, based on what I am reading from your posts:

1) mandatory phone calls
2) mandatory e-mails
3) mandatory blog posts
4) watching short videos (three) of me guiding the process
5) a submission of their ongoing research paper before and after (NEW: People that Matter)
6) a possible trip to Dubai to go to the book shop to find a book on their topic/people being researched
7) a casual movie or coffee outing (social event)

I will have student services come and explain the goals and that this is not a virtual week, but a virtual unit from my course (so they should stay in country and attend other classes: this is a concern)

I will administer a survey/questions to students pre and post and interview them to get a snapshot of their feeling

I will never be able to compile all of this in a formal article (I think) in 10 weeks, but will try and will attempt to write this up for the college journal (our version of the Teacher Record)

Very exciting week for me as I was able to 1) get going deeply into this course 2) start looking into the VHS, 3) have finished the article, and 4) will run (me and my runners) the 21k here in just 10 hours time. Then I will feel so free and dig even deeper.

Kind regards to all - especially if you have made it this far


Steve