Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Wiki Lab

My school district is listed in Wikipedia, but the information is so underdeveloped that Wikipedia refers to the article as a stub. Only Kearsley High School was mentioned in the article.

 

I added to the “history” section of the article with a brief description of our location, number of students, and a listing of the seven schools that make up Kearsley Community Schools. Here is the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kearsley_Community_Schools  


I created a wiki in Wikispaces using the Plus Plan for Educators. Per the Wiki Lab instructions, I also created a free wiki account in PBWorks and experimented with that wiki space according to the lab instructions.  I decided I liked the layout of Wikispaces better and therefore used it for my performance tasks.   The URL is https://drharrisclassroom.wikispaces.com.  Here is a list of some of the features I used or modified:
  • I chose the notebook theme and applied the red (it looks more like dusty rose) color.
  • I played around with changing the style sheet and then decided to leave it on the default setting.
  • I tried adding a logo but was not happy with how much space it took up on the page so I reset that feature to the default also.
  • I set Permissions to “Everyone can view pages, but only members of this wiki can edit pages.”
  • I also checked “Allow membership requests.”
  • If my school district ever allows (i.e. unblocks) Wikis, I will use the UserCreator feature to add my current students to the wikispace. 
I sent invitations to 4 of my colleagues to join my wiki as collaborators.  Again, because the filter on our internet at school blocks wikis, they will have to participate from home. The content of the wiki is links to webpages that I have learned about in this class that I did not know about before that I think would be helpful in planning lessons for our students at AMS.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

UDL Principles Applied to Career Pathways Lesson Plan

Representation, expression, engagement- three powerful tests to see if your lesson plan is truly learner based!
Below is a screen capture of the"checklist" for UDL that I used to self-evaluate my Michigan Career Pathways lesson plan.  It was nice to see how many checkpoints of UDL that were addressed by my lesson.  It was even more important to see the barriers to learning that were not addressed in the lesson plan.  I noted on this checklist the specific parts of the lesson plan that I felt featured the principles.  I also noted on this checklist the barriers to learning that still existed and suggested provisions that could be made to address these barriers.