As a technology teacher, I have used a variety of online tools in my classroom to give students experience with the online learning environment.  I have used Blackboard, Moodle, Wikispaces, Weebly, Wikipedia, MEL, and a ton of online research databases (ABC Clio, ProQuest, etc).  I have designed assignments that were online.  For example, I used Wikispaces to have my students create and online novel.  They had to participate in a discussion thread, collaborate within their individual groups, collaborate with other groups to know where to begin and what was happening prior to their chapter, and they had to communicate with me to get their questions answered.  I used Blackboard and now Moodle to give the 8th Grade Technology Assessment.  I have used the discussion thread in Blackboard to repsond to topics, pictures of the day and other such journaling activities.  I use a ton of online tools to get my students extra practice in keyboarding or other class activities.  We research and build webpages for a cross-curricular activity with social studies to better understand the Oregon Trail experience.  I am currently configuring a Snow Leopard server to enable our district to develop student generated wikis so that their information does not go out onto the world wide web or the Internet.  I am currently working on a project that will more all student mandated portfolios to a digital format.  Currently I am serving on a team that is bringing wifi to our high and middle schools to develop a high-bred access format for our staff and students.   There are a ton of things that are going on in our district to advance and change with the surge o digital media.

When you talk about strategies for making online learning more meaningful, I first think of need.  What do we need to be able to provide access to our students?  The biggest challenge is access, second only to atmosphere.  Many of our students do not have high speed access to the Internet.  This presents a great challenge to our students.  These are the students that need it the most.  The digital divide is not only real and now, but it is crippling.  Imagine that you had no Internet access to take this course.  Where would you have to go to complete your work?  How would you get there?  Are you limited by the restrictions at the location you have?  How will you save things?  Do you have time to make it to your location?  Are there chores or responsibilities that keep you from going?  There are a ton of other restrictions and problems relating to access.  But access is a huge problem.  Without fair and complete access, online learning is not only meaningless, it is not even an option.

Now consider atmosphere.  I don't care how great the online learning experience is, if you do not have a time and place that allows for it, you are not going to get the benefits from it.  Many of my students go home to families that are not the best or require that they provide the childcare duties for the family.  This is most prevelant in the girls.  They often remark that they could not get homework done because they were up late watching their siblings while mom and/or dad were out or working.  Add poor atmosphere to the digital divide and the chasm just keeps growing.

Many teachers want to move to a form of online learning to supplement their students education, but the fact of the matter is that many students just have no means of participating.  Most teachers in my district are younger and at least tech-knowledgeable.  They are able to use or learn new tech skills relatively quickly.  They are not a barrier to the online learning push.  They just know that they are only punishing kids who are already behind. 

Education is often the training arm of the business and governmental communities.  How education is structured is based on the needs of the society and these two institutions drive society to a great degree.  Online learning is a real and gigantic skill set of the future, but for whom?  Are we using education to sift out those who have and those who have not?

The strategies for online learning outlined in Michigan Department of Education. Michigan
Merit Curriculum: Guidelines – Online Experience are fairly complete.  I don't think there are elements that are missing.  I do however think that we, as teachers and communities, need to find a way to give every student the opportunity to learn online, from home (or someplace equivelant) and gain something from the experience.  I cover many of the elements in my classroom, but the responsibility for online learning is much bigger.  If you want a strategy suggestion, I have one: find a way to give every kids a laptop or tablet device so they can begin to tap the enormous amount of information and training the Internet has to offer.  Teach them to manage their online time to limit the distractions and hazards of the Internet.  Facebook, Youtube and other such sites offer way to many opportunities for lost

I am torn on this one.  I liked having the checklist to remind me of the elements that should go into every lesson plan to make it the most effective.  However, I also know and felt like this checklist was way to long to be useful for lesson evaluation everytime.  Plenty of research shows that lists can be recalled best when kept to between 3 and 5 items.  That is why most speechs have threee main points and why lists are given in the "top three" items format.  Even phone numbers and social security numbers are broken into 3 and 4 segment lists.  There has to be a happy medium.  There should be a checklist that highlights the critical areas while keeping the list to shorter that 3 pages at 8 point font.  I was able to identify several barriers and features in the lesson plan that I created.  I used the UDL principles to highlight them in different colors for quicker recognition and increases recall.  Again, helpful but too darn long to be practical for everyday use. 

The following is the PDF of my lesson plan.  This is a re-work of an actual plan that I use every year.  I made specific TPACK references in the last section under technology.

I decided to make the Ranger Cloak as part five of the project.  The reason I decided on the cloak was for its symbolic nature.  My theme revolved around the main character's development and the loneliness that he must accept as part of his profession.  He must remain detached from others in order to protect them.  The Ranger's cloak is crucial in keeping him hidden, even when in plain sight.  It also provides an aura of mystery and fear to others that keeps them from getting to close to Rangers.  Rangers are surrounded by superstition, wild stories and often seen as magical beings.  The cloak ties this project together. You can find the entire series on Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger's_Apprentice 

Summary:
Will, the Ranger's Apprentice, has just recovered from and addiction to warm weed and is trying to escape Skandian territory along with his friend Evanlyn (who is really Princess Cassandra.  Evanlyn is captured by invading soldiers, called the Temujai, and Will must rescue her.  Will rescues Evanlyn along with the help of his friend Horace and his mentor Halt who have been searching for him.  They discover the Temujai and go back to the people who once held Will and Evanlyn in slavery to warn them of the invasion.  The team decides to stay and help the Skandian people fight off the terrible Temujai.  Halt takes the lead as tactician.  The team and the Skandian people fight off the Temujai, freeing Skandia.  A treaty is struck between the Skandian people and the Aurluen people as a result of the battle.  Will, Horace, Halt and Princess Cassandra return home heros.

I decided to create an obituary, even though the main character does not actually die in the series.  I did this so that we could get the perspective of his fellow Rangers and see that Rangers are only truly understood by other Rangers.  I used MS Word to create the text, then Photoshop to create the background.

This is an intersting way to summarize the book, familiarize yourself with the people, places, things and plots within the story.  Included in this Wordle is the theme "He's a Ranger."  This is the link to all of the other pieces of the MGP.  I create two separate Wordles and used Photoshop Elements to combine them.

This is a two-part piece.  The first is a PDF file that contains a written format of the diary entry.  Then I thought that I should use Audacity to create an audio version.  So instead of choosing one or the other.....I did both.

    I agree with this article.  I think that we are not only engaged in the act of teaching or playing the role of the teacher, but we are also engaged in the evaluation of teaching.  As teachers we are constantly analyzing the information that we are presenting, looking at the effectiveness of the delivery and evaluating the outcome.  I had a professor who was a retired teacher of 30 plus years and she once said that she never felt like she was a real teacher until she had taught 10 years.  She explained that this was because it was in her 10th year that she finally was able to plan, execute and evaluate her lessons (teaching) as a single processs and not just pieces.  I thought this was profound.  In a time where results are mandated and their immediacy are critical, we often think of teachers as masters of the art of teaching right out of the box.  Our profession is unlike any other, yet the results that are demanded give no regard for this uniqueness of situation.  
    Teaching as a scholarly pusuit involves finding stability in a profession that has none.  We teach different students, who come to us with different educational and socioecomonic backgrounds.  Our schedules rotate based on staffing needs not on student needs.  We are asked to take on greater responsibilities within the district we teach due to reductions in staffing.  We are constantly moving from subject to subject and often from grade level to grade level.  In essence, we are trying to become scholarly teachers on a collidescope of change.  The image that comes to mind is that of two rival log rollers trying to throw each other off the same log.  They rush forward, stop, start again, then change direction until one is tossed off into the cold river.  I say all this to outline the difficulty of becoming scholarly in an environment that offers the teacher no stability but instead provides a rush of change.
    In this atmosphere, I see myself as well as my fellow teachers moving more toward isolation and less toward collaboration.  We talk to each other less and less as the demands of teaching force us to spend a greater amount of time trying to keep on top of the daily work load.  We have less funds to allow us to attend professional development to the point of being denied free training because many districts do not want to pay the substitutes so that we can attend.  Our in-school professional development is reduced to working on school improvement plans or refresher trainings on new state-mandated reporting requirements.  We have little time to spend on increasing our knowledge as professionals.  This includes time to talk to one another or collaborate with other professionals outside our physical walls.
    I agree most of all with the articles deduction that teaching is an endless exercise of inquiry.  Part of this inquiry must be the ability to be make mistakes.  I believe this so much, that I have, since my first class, put right in my syllabus that students are encouraged to make mistakes, be wrong and start again.  Although not everything is included in this as part of my practice (like quizzes and tests) the majority of projects and assigments have a framework of trial and error built into them.  Students must be able to discover things for themselves and thus we must prescribe to the belief that teaching is about guiding students toward the discovery and not just tell them the answer.  Critical thinking is something that requires students to "learn" to be right and not just be right.  This type of framework allows students to reach an answer that best fits their analysis and may result in different conclusions.  However, isn't that the way life is...more gray than black and white?
    I will end with a quote from a college professor that has stuck with me since 1989..."If you answer the question then you have learned one thing, but if you question the answer then you are faced with a magnitude of possibilities followed by more questions and the learning is quite possibly endless."

This type of exercise is interesting for me.  I spend a great deal of time in the reflecitve process personally, so the exercise is not different but my approach to change is.  Very rarely do I make changes without at least one to two months of evaluating.  I have found that snap decisions to change rarely stick and rarely turn out well for most involved.  I like to "sleep" on it for longer.  When I do make the changes they usually are more meaningful and last.  I can tell you in looking back that I have learned a ton of new programs that will be going back with me to my district for the other teachers to use.  The one program that I will introduce them to is Jing.  You cannot push too much at them at one time, but this one is easy and I believe they will want to make use of it.  I plan to use my Snapshots for Learning website, grow it and maintain it.  I would also like to do a PD that introduces them to new programs.  I think this would be best done through a description-shared doc.  You can look back...you can look forward...but you are still just here.