Reviewing your previous blog posts, what, if anything, has changed in your attitude toward online schools and online schooling over the past 15 weeks?

For some time before the first day of this course, I've thought that education would soon change largely due to the affordances of the Internet. I believed that the Internet could improve education in so many ways in many cases, and in others, completely change it. With this interest, I thought that I was ahead of the game.
Two weeks into the course, I was so surprised by the many online schools and online schooling already available. I found out that I am not ahead of the game! Research has been going on for some years already. Online models have been tested and changed over time, and continues to be tested and improved upon.
For the next few weeks, I was amazed at how awesome online schooling would be and was eager to learn more about it.
In the recent weeks, however, I've learned that online schools, along with its benefits, also have their disadvantages. What interests me now are the different ways we can improve the current online schooling system, especially in the areas of virtual science labs and foreign language teaching.
This course was definitely a lot of work, but I learned that much more. I'm not even sure if this course was a required one or an elective for me, but I'm glad I took it.

What was the most difficult aspect of researching this topic?

For my final project, I researched how foreign languages are taught online. The most difficult aspect about this research was going more in depth of how languages, especially of different alphabetical systems, are taught specific to a country's or region's culture and usage. Research data was lacking in more detailed areas of teaching a foreign language, such as the sequence of strokes required to write a non-roman alphabet in an online environment. If a foreign language class takes place online, are students required to learn the foreign language's keyboarding as well? Other than that, there were an abundance of articles and demo lessons available to get a general idea of what an online foreign language course is like. It makes me wonder... the online approach makes sense, and for-profit companies certainly make it sound easy, but will it really work, or is it a lot of marketing? I'll give it a shot one of these days.

What did you learn this week that struck you as particularly important in learning about virtual schools? Has your thinking changed as a result of what you learned this week?

The argumentative response assignment was most difficult for me this week because everyone offered such agreeable and well-thought out posts. As I read and reread each post, thinking about and looking for potential arguments, I came to think about the difficulty in measuring the quality of an online teacher. With such an inadequate level of studies available on online learning in its elementary stages, it is quite difficult to assess online teachers beyond standardized test scores. When it comes to content retention rates or application of newly learned concepts beyond a course, we still lack enough data to conclude what really constitutes a good online teacher. For this reason, I see it as all the more crucial that we continue to (though oftentimes inadequately) compare f2f and online courses to determine which, in general, yields more superior students and citizens, and in which disciplines. 

My thinking has not changed, but I continue to learn and adopt new ideas throughout each progressive week.

What did you learn this week that struck you as particularly important in learning about virtual schools? Has your thinking changed as a result of what you learned this week?

This week's readings has allowed me to realize that there is still so much to research and figure out in the virtual education world. Comparing virtual learning to f2f learning is only the beginning. I'm sure that there are many other areas of virtual education yet to be studied and reflected upon, possibly even at a level unrelated to any type of study we've already done in f2f learning. It looks like virtual learning will introduce this and the next generation a revolutionized way of learning, and along with it may come a whole new set of problems to deal with. 

I wouldn't say my thinking has changed per se, but it did shine light on further difficulties of research in virtual learning.

Now that you have seen what other people did in creating their units, is there anything that you might do differently if you were to redesign your own unit?

I may have used the moodle platform and thought of ways to use its tools more. It's definitely a different platform to use than the one we had thought of (which would most likely require the building of a new learning site). This course (MSTU4050) has been a really engaging and thought provoking class so far, so I'd be interested to brainstorm some of the ways a math course could benefit from this platform. I would like to see a sample math class on moodle, if one exists somewhere.

What are you most concerned about as you embark on creating a curriculum unit?

Gus and I will be creating a curriculum on quadratic functions. While I've taught this topic many times, I have never taught it online. I am most concerned about the efficient online delivery of content, especially because the discussion forum, a virtual classroom tool I'm most familiar with, may be difficult to use heavily in a math class. I also want to make sure that I use online resources to the best of its capabilities, rather than being tethered to the teaching methods effective in a physical classroom. This project should be very interesting and challenging. I hope that we are able to develop an excellent curriculum that can be used.

Did you change anything in the Google spreadsheet? If so, what? Has your view of the schools you chose to research changed from the first week you looked at them? If so, how?

I did not change any of the placements for either of the schools that I'd researched. While I definitely learned a lot more in depth about student-student interactions and online discussions, I still feel that the schools were generally placed appropriately based on the information that I was able to gather throughout the research.