| Friday, December 12, 2008 |
| The End |
I began class by going over the agenda for this final lab session. The students then completed the final course online evaluations.
I decided to facilitate peer reviews of the e-Portfolios for the main lab activity this week. Many students had asked me what to put on their Portfolio Discussion pages, and so doing a peer review provided them with some content for those pages. I showed them how to add peers as collaborators on their sites. This allowed the peers to post their remarks as comments on the bottom of the Portfolio Discussion pages. Knowing that the collaborator role also allows editing capabilities, I cautioned the class to honor their peers by not making any changes except to add comments. I provided each of the students with two copies of a peer evaluation rubric. I thought that giving them paper copies of the rubric would be easier for the students to write remarks while viewing the e-Portfolios on screen and would allow them to hand their completed rubrics to the e-Portfolio authors. I also wanted the comments posted on the Portfolio Discussion pages to be positive, so the paper rubric was a means for the students to communicate critical feedback.
After about 15 minutes of instruction on how to add collaborators and review the portfolios, the students had 45 minutes to complete their reviews. I advised them to spend about 20 minutes on each portfolio and to make revisions to their own portfolios if they finished early. This seemed to be adequate time, and I enjoyed observing the interactions between students as they explained their feedback to their peers. The activity also seemed to be quite beneficial as it helped the students make final revisions to their portfolios before they were graded.
I expressed my appreciation to the students for their enthusiasm and participation this semester. I really did have a great group of students, which was such a blessing as I had a tough semester learning to handle all my responsibilities with a small child.
I had Mother Bear's Pizza deliver several large pizzas shortly before the end of class, and we spent the final moments of Lab 28816 discussing the students' future careers while enjoying pizza and cookies in a nearby conference room. I really enjoyed this time, as the students opened up a lot about their thoughts concerning their majors and changing majors and future jobs. They asked me about grad school and types of jobs they could do with an education major. I related some of my undergraduate experiences, how I changed majors several times, and how I finally decided on my chosen career. I encouraged them to gain some authentic experiences in education, such as substitute teaching or working at a childcare facility, to get a better idea of what it feels like to be a teacher. I found these final moments so valuable as I got to know my students better and they were able to talk candidly with me about their thoughts on teaching and technology.
It reminded me of a Mastercard commercial...
3 large pizzas from Mother Bear's - $50
1 dozen Reese's chip cookies - $5
A meaningful time of discussion and reflection - PricelessLabels: teaching, W200 |
posted by SG @ 11:54 AM   |
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