During this section of the course we have discussed the many roles of
the facilitator of online teaching. It
has been very interesting and provides new insight for the many and varied
responsibilities and tasks of the online teacher.
I have begun to see how I would facilitate a course that I have wanted
to teach. The course would be for
elementary school teachers and is called Identifying
and Managing the Traumatized Child in the Classroom. This
would be an online course that would be an independent course provided as a
consultant not associated with a university.
It would be primarily a constructivist model, using both synchronous and
asynchronous sessions.
The
article, The Pedagogy of Web Site Design by Knox gave me many ideas on how to
set up the course and market it. Since I
am looking at teaching a class outside of the university setting marketing the
class to consumers who would be motivated to pay for the course and spend their
valuable time on the course is extremely important. My approach would be to join several
education groups on Facebook and begin using the social network to meet people. I would set up a series of blogs and posts
related to child trauma and the impact on school behavior. I would have a professional page on Facebook
that people could see. On that page I
would have some facts about my career and expertise. I would provide a description of the class
and the class objectives. Part one of
the content would be about how children who have experienced trauma present in
the classroom and how they are often misdiagnosed as having ADHD. This
misdiagnosis often leads to treatment which actually exacerbates their
behaviors in the classroom and other areas of the child life. Part two of
the content would pertain to therapeutic (helpful) ways to deal with the child
in the classroom, thus reducing their anxiety and creating a safe environment
thus improving their classroom behaviors and producing a less stressful and
chaotic classroom setting.
Based on Knox's writings I want to develop a community of
scholars. He says that "Creating a virtual course is about creating
a community of scholars among a group of people who will never see one
another". I believe that teachers have a lot of experience with this
population that they can share with each other. This is consistent with
the principle of effective learning and teaching regarding enhancing through
worthwhile learning partnerships. The teacher and learners would learn
from each other and the learners would learn from each other. They would
be able to share their successes and struggles and continue to learn from each
other as they take their learning into the classroom and integrate into their
practice. I believe this would make a very rich learning environment,
building and sustaining hope as they share their successes in the classroom.
I would also introduce social bookmarking to the class and ask that
they make their social bookmarks public so their class peers can benefit from
their excellent materials. It would be a
requirement that each student capture at least 3 sites for their social bookmarkers and then find one site from a peers social bookmark that they would
add to their own. This exercise will
help build the community long term as well as teach social bookmarking and
giving them additional resources to find and read.
To start this community, the course would begin with an
icebreaker. The icebreaker would introduce the students to each
other and hopefully to remind each student with why they chose their careers
and to reconnect them with their early desires to help children in the
classroom. My icebreaker is not new but
I feel it meet the objectives of the icebreaker for this class. The icebreaker is as follows:
Childhood
Dream.
Ask
the participants to share what they wanted to be when they grew up and ask them
to reflect on how this correlates with their current career.
I would go a step further and ask them to choose a picture that symbolizes
where they find themselves in their current career and explain why they chose
that picture. They would also briefly comment on what they hope to gain
from this course.
One of the barriers to community that might occur would be teachers from
an urban "at risk" school believing that the children in their
classes produced more challenging behaviors than teachers from rural settings
were experiencing. There could also be some belief that children from
impoverished homes produced more challenging behaviors that those of children
from middle to upper class homes. If teachers from war torn countries participated
the type of trauma those children have experienced would be very different and they
may initially believe that they don’t belong in the class. I
believe that these barriers would be removed with strong initial education on
the causes of trauma and that the impact of trauma is the same regardless of
the cause of the trauma. Also good
facilitation and community and group process will assist with minimizing the
barriers.
Online instruction would be a good model for teaching this class. It would meet the learning objectives of the
students and allow them to take the class at their convenience. I believe that they would also see a benefit
from interacting with other teachers with similar interests and
convictions. Online instruction would
offer them opportunities to meet other teachers who they would not normally
meet and would have the potential to expand their thinking.
I would also incorporate the principles of understanding of the learner
and the active construction of meaning. I would work on identifying what
past and present experiences influence the student’s development. I would
use those experiences to promote their ability to identify trauma and to link
that knowledge with their prior experiences. I would use those
experiences to promote their creative and critical thinking about how they could
best manage the behaviors presented by the traumatized child. I would use
the teachers understanding of how to deal with a child of trauma of war,
natural disasters and other understandable trauma to challenge their knowledge
and understanding of how to respond to the behaviors of the child who has been
traumatized in their family and neighborhoods. I would ask them to
critically look at their prior practice and develop a new strategy of
responding.
Although I do believe that there is a place for twitter in online
instruction, I am not sure that I would incorporate its use into this
class. From my reading on twitter and
from following some professional twitter pages, I don’t feel like I would have
the time to devote to this. It requires
a great deal of research to produce a twitter daily or weekly. If at some point in time this became a source
of full time employment instead of being outside of my full time job, I would
consider adding twitter since I would be able to devote the time that it
deserves.
I believe that I would use Facebook to develop a professional page and
to access the educational groups on Facebook.
It would be one of my marketing strategies. I would also use that forum to offer a place
for class graduates to continue their work of community, sharing their
successes and offering suggestions for those who are struggling. I
would follow those discussions, participating on occasion to let them know I am
still invested in them but wanting them to have their own support system. This
would be an excellent place to recruit guest speakers.
Well there are
the large brushstrokes of my dream class.
Now I must get down to the work. There
are several key things that I would do to prepare for an upcoming class. I
will be using Black Board 9.1 that is offered through coursesites.com. I will need to build my class first conceptually
and then within the Course Management System.
I must become an expert on this system so I know how to use it and can
assist my class participants.
I need to develop
an Orientation. The Orientation would discuss how to get in touch with
me, how the class operated, what the expectations were such as due dates and
numbers of replies to threaded discussions. I would include a paragraph
about what the benefits would be to the students taking the class.
I would also
develop a syllabus that would discuss class policies, extra credit, how to use
citations and so forth. Grading rubrics would be placed into the
syllabus. Although a syllabus would not
be required since this class is not attached to an accreditation agency or
university, I believe it is expected from higher level learners and is a
valuable communication tool.
I would develop a
course calendar and have all of the due dates of projects placed into the
calendar. I like the structure and organization that a calendar adds to
the class. It is a visual reminder of what is due when and it helps students to
plan.
I would develop a section for course questions
and explain the purpose of course questions. I would explain when to use
course questions and when to use email. These explanations would be included
in the Orientation as well. Students who
used course email for course questions will be redirected to course questions
in a positive manner.
Lastly, I would
write a welcome email to the students welcoming them to class and directing
them to my previously designed home page that identified the class name, my
name and contact information and clear instructions about what to do
first. The email would be friendly and informative.
I think if I used
these elements each time, I would find
some areas that needed clarification or strengthening and then I could modify
for the next class until all gaps were closed and class launch would become a
smooth process for me and the students.
Of course there would be ongoing maintenance of the Course Management
System and of the course itself. There
will be technical problems that need to be addressed. This can be minimized by my familiarity with
the tools that I am using. I will also
need to keep notes about modifications I want to make to the course as I go
along so the course can continue to be relevant and strong.
My plan is to set
up the class and then have a group of friends, many of whom are teachers, take
the course and offer feedback about the course and allow me time to practice
and familiarize myself with the tools and process. I see this process as taking about one year
to launch from development to testing and redesign. I am very excited about beginning this
process and am looking forward to completing the certificate program that is teaching
me so much about how to make this dream a reality.
