e-Portfolio

Ice Breakers 

One of our first activities in the class was to do an ice breaker.  This is a great way to encourage a positive classroom environment, and is especially important in an online class where students do not meet face to face.  I always do an ice breaker with my high school students.  For this ice breaker, we were asked to choose our favorite movie, summarize it and explain why it is special for us. I picked Miracle on 34th Street which prompted many people to share about their own Christmas experiences. Some made me laugh, others made me want to cry!  I learned a lot about my classmates.

RLO - Reusable Learning Objects

Re-useable learning objects are self contained lessons that can be used over and over again.  I didn't realize this, but I make videos for my students to watch they are RLO's also.  I have also embedded these videos in a form so questions could be asked with the lesson.  The RLO we did here was on teacher-centered vs learner-centered assessments.  It was not a video but had interactive activities. The last page had our comments.  I included it below. I see real value in RLO for my flipped classroom, I will have to see how to make some on my own!

Concept Maps

Concept maps are very useful for teachers and students.  For teachers it is a great way to organize a unit.  The concept map can label the objectives, how you are going to provide opportunities for the students to achieve those objectives (activities) and how you will know if they have achieved them (assessment).  The map gives a visual overview for the unit itself and can provide insights in to how the topics are related and the variety of all three.  I have included the start of one for my periodic table unit below.  Students can also use this to see connections within a unit or topic, compare and contrast with Venn Diagrams, or examine thinking process with a flow diagram (for example - how to determine if a molecule is polar or nonpolar).

Assessment Taxonomy

When designing a unit or a class, objectives are very important to determine what the students will learn/accomplish, how they will achieve that learning, and how that learning will be assessed.  It is also important to challenge students with a variety of thinking skills, including higher level thinking as listed in Bloom's taxonomy.  One tool to use in this process is an assessment taxonomy where the thinking order is listed along with the objectives that fit those categories.  The following is an example from my periodic table unit.

Bloom categories/ Revised Taxonomy	Learning objective verbs	Objective/Activity
Knowledge /Remembering (recall, list, define, identify, collect, label)	Locate, name, match	Given a periodic table, the student will locate, name, and match the family names and main group elements with 90% accuracy or better.
Comprehension/Understanding (summarize, describe interpret, predict, discuss)	Describe, summarize	After researching an element, the student will describe and summarize its properties, family, uses, discovery, and electron configuration (short, long and valence) in an online presentation with a level of proficiency or better according to the rubric.
Application/Applying (apply, demonstrate, illustrate, classify, experiment, discover)
Analysis/Analyzing (analyze, classify, connect, explain, infer)	Analyze, explain	After class work on nuclear control, the student will analyze the trends and explain the reasons for the trends in atomic radii, first ionization energy, electronegativity or subsequent ionization energy based on nuclear control in an online video with a level of proficiency or better according to the rubric.
Evaluation/Evaluating (assess, recommend, convince, compare, conclude, summarize)	Compare and contrast	After watching presentations of 2 other elements in same family as their element, the student will compare and contrast the three elements using an online Venn diagram with a level of proficiency or better according to the rubric.
Synthesis/Creating (combine, integrate, plan, create, design, formulate)

Precourse Survey

Taking a survey before the course begins can really help a teacher plan for the class as a whole and for the individual.  I teach a flipped class in high school chemistry.  Students watch videos or read at home and do activities and labs in the classroom.  We do a lot of online activities, since students can do that at their own pace.  The survey will help me know how much computer access the students have, what programs they are familiar with and information about their learning styles and thoughts on science.  

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.