Week 6 post

Well, there was a little confusion on my end last week and I missed my blog post. I'm currently taking three online classes - all of them starting on different dates, so that means three different modules each week and I just got confused on which week we were on in this class.

Anyway, the reading for this week. I was particulary interested in the "Cybercoaching: Rubrics, Feedback, and Metacognition, Oh My!" reading by Naomi Jeffery Petersen, Ed.D. I am a teacher and I am a coach. Like many teachers I tend to get defensive if some suggests that I am no longer a teacher and applies another name to what I do. Am I no less a teacher because I don't have a classroom of students physically in front of me? How close of a proximity do I have to be to be considered a teacher? After reading the article I found that it's not meant to be derogatory, it's just the truth. Interestingly enough, I was just thinking this morning that I didn't like the title of "coach" because I always feel like I'm a "sports teacher." I feel that even more after reading the explaination of what a coach is on page 3.

It wasn't until I go to page 8 before I found something that really struck a chord with me. The explaination of a rubric as "A holistic rubric will describe the whole essay at each level of proficiency; an analytic rubric will describe eachcriterion, typically organized in a matrix to show gradual changes in quality (Mertler, 2001)." I believe that this is one of the most important aspects of teaching an online class. I had three classes last semester and three this semester. I would say that the classes that went the smoothest and I learned the most were the ones that had the most clear rubrics. A place that no matter how lost you get, you can always refer back to those as your guide.

I think that the rubics place in online education is paramount and it really has show me how I should use them more in my standard classes.