Minghua's Sep Update

Hi, everyone:

My assignment is for my Money and Banking class and it has three phases. The first phase is to ask them to make choices based on their instinct or previous knowledge 1) choose between stock and bonds as an investment option, 2) pick up three favorite stocks 3) pick up favorite bonds. The first phase of my assignment is due the second week of the semester. They posted their answers on WebCT at designed individual cubbie. I did not ask them to comment on each other's posts. Instead I read each of their post and wrote one commment for each of their posts. Fortunately there is only 9 students in this class and I had to write only 27 comments maximim (I could not do this for my ET101 class with 24 students). One student did not post his answers on time and another student only answers one of the three questions. The rest of the students all did a very good job.

By and large I think it works fine for me. For the second and third phases I will introduce more interaction by requiring them to write peer reviews: respond to two of their peers's posts.

Here is another reason I love blog: you can post the link. However I cannot with WebCt discussion board. But you can visit my class discussion board as viewstudent. It is a public user account used by a lof of instructors. The user name is viewstudent and the password is webct. After signing in you can scroll down the list of all courses and my course is Money and Banking ET223. The discussion board is named as Investment Guru Forum.

Minghua's respond to August Check in: My plans

Hi, everyone:

Sorry for coming so late. As I mentioned in my presenation back in August, I use WebCT as the platform for my online assignments. I love blog but I rely on WebCT to assign homework, release notes to the students, let them monitor their grades, etc. And my impresssion is that students might have a hard time to keep track of both WebCT and a separate blog site. Keith and I had the coverstation the other day and we agreed that it would be wonderful if there is a blog site that will also provide the other features that blackboard/webct offer. In that case I will definitely switch to blog.

Anyway, I still use WebCT discussion board to assign the Investment Learn Curve projet I proposed. Each student is assigned one cubbie and post their comments there. It is easier for me to keep track and give them credit accordingly. For the first post, I do not require them to respond to each other but I will post my comments for each of them. For the second and third post I will require them to write comments for their peers.

Bigger Classroom/Gabcast Assignment

Hi everyone:
I had my College Writing I students call in their essay topics to my Gabcast channel last week as prewriting for their first essay on "Received Ideas." I think it worked okay. It's a small sample: there are only 9 students enrolled in the class, and 8 completed the task by the due date. Later on, maybe after the students have written the first two essays, I'll do a survey and get their feedback on whether they found the phone-in useful.
I found collecting the messages and burning them to a CD to play in class pretty easy. One of my concerns had been sound quality, but only two messages were two messages sounded a little wonky, and even with those, I could understand what was being said on a second listen. With a small number of students, and it being early in the semester without a lot of papers to grade, it wasn't too difficult to transfer the phone messages from my Gabcast channel to the Bigger Classroom blog, but I can anticipate that this might not always be the case.
So the technology worked fine, and I'm still evaluating the pedagogical value.
This is a link to the post on my Bigger Classroom blog with student phone messages:
http://biggerclassroom.blogspot.com/2007/09/received-ideas-phone-messages.html
Tracy

Into The Wild Blog Update

I really don't have much to update you all on. My first assignment is not due until the beginning of October so once the students submit that I will have an update as to how it went. I explained to them the assignment on the first day of class and could tell from some of their reactions that creating a blog and using it as an online journal written as a character in a book is an assignment that is different for them, which for me is good. One update I can share with you is that I took what we learned at Calderwood and designed an academic blog. One of the things I struggle with is students taking proper notes and making sure they understand and go back and review the important aspects of class discussions/lectures. So I took what we learned at Calderwood and I started an academic blog that chronicles what went on in class, the discussion topics, things to focus on for next class, main points to study for quizzes/exams, homework assignments, etc. This blog stemmed from my own struggle to keep my semesters straight when I am teaching 4 classes or multiple sections and things can get hectic. Immediately after class I would write a paragraph to myself that summed up class and reminded me what to focus on next class. I realized that if I am struggling to keep things straight, maybe the students are too. I chose to do this in blog format because you can be more creative and more informal which seems to be more inviting to students, unlike how they perceive platforms like WebCT, Blackboard, etc. Here is the link. http://profdetjen.blogspot.com

5-minutes of change

The 5-minute introduction to counseling.


In the span of 5 minutes, let me introduce to this subject.

In America,

The estimated number of victims of child maltreatment in 1999 was 826,000.
The estimated rate of child maltreatment in 1999 was 11.8 per 1,000 children.
Approximately two additional children are reported for suspicion of child abuse and neglect for every allegation that is substantiated.
The total number of children reported for suspicion of child abuse and neglect in 1998 was 3,154,000. This is a rate of 45 per 1,000 children.

National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse. 1999. Current Trends in Child Abuse Reporting and Fatalities: The results of the 1998 Annual Fifty State Survey. Chicago, IL: National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse.

The number of children abused or neglected in 1986 was 931,000; in 1993 the number of children was 1,553,800. (This is a two point estimate that does not reflect the flattening trend since 1992. The NIS-3 number for 1993 is higher than the number reported in the Annual Fifty State Survey because it included cases not known to child protection agencies.)
Sedlak, A., & Broadhurst, D. 1996. The Executive Summary of the Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-3). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
The assignment for this unit in Child Abuse and Neglect has been structured to challenge your inner powers to empathize and interpret the feelings of a victim of abuse. These skills are necessary for all of us that are working in this field. I would like for you and your partner to travel the Internet to the following site;

http://www.geocities.com/afterthestorm1/therearesecrets.htm.

Please open this site, read and reflect on this poem. Upon completion of this step, draft a general blueprint on how your team would propose to represent to others the feelings expressed in this poem without the use of words. Upon completion of this task, the next step in this assignment is to formulate a strategy for the implementation of this proposal. Once you have formulated the strategy, your next task is to create a workable plan of action to fulfill this assignment. The final steps of this assignment are to present your portrayal and then present your team’s descriptive picture of the victim for all to review and reflect. Successful completion of this assignment will be evaluated upon how well the final product meets the standards that have been set within the text of this assignment. Good luck and enjoy.

Attempt #2

http://onlinedrawingcritiquefall07.blogspot.com/

My Blog Site

Morning, Everyone:

Since this is THE big day, and I'm #2 on the speaking list, I thought I'd send you the link to my blog site to save time and hassle. It's at:

http://onlinedrawingcritiquefall07.blogspot.com

Cheers!