Online Teaching and Learning

I found the Michigan Merit Curriculum Online Experience Guideline Companion Document very useful. If I were a teaching in a classroom, I would definitely use EduBlogs http://edublogs.com – a personal online journal- as one of the technologies as an online experience. 

What content could this help you teach?

Teachers could teach a foreign language with EduBlogs. Blogging promotes writing skills and builds language proficiency. Students could blog on various topics, they could blog a summary of a book chapter, etc.  Blogging also provides a resource for sharing. Student would blog and other classmates would follow his/her blog and comment. Idea for an activity: teacher can give a student 10 new words and they would have to blog using those 10 new words. A classmate would have to comment on the blog using 5 out of 10 new foreign words. Blogging builds student's vocabulary, grammar and imagination!

This activity would also meet Michigan World Language Standards (Communicate in Languages Other Than English) 1- 1.1 Communication   Interpersonal Communication: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions.

What type of pedagogical strategies might you use with your students?

Some of the pedagogical strategies that I might use are: summarizing, feedback and homework.

I did not find any technologies which would be harder to use with students.

What I like about blogs: students with various learning styles could participate in this activity. Even a shy student who does not like to speak up in the classroom would feel more comfortable writing down ideas and thoughts. 

Wiki Assignment

For my wiki lab, I looked up Michigan State University on Wikipedia. I was trying to look up anything about international student enrollment at Michigan State University. The only fact on Wikipedia was that some students come from about 125 countries. I was very surprised that no specific international student enrollment number was mentioned and what top countries were represented especially when MSU is playing a very big role in international education. This is what I corrected and added (in red):
While 89% of students come from all 83 counties in the State of Michigan,^[30] also represented are all 50 states in the U.S. and about 130 other countries.^[2] In 2010-2011 5,351 international students enrolled at MSU. The top five countries represented: China, Korea, India, Taiwan and Canada. [5] 

Here is a screenshot of a page that I corrected in Wikipedia:

I created my wiki on Wikispaces: http://neringa.wikispaces.com/

Applications of UDL Principles

My lesson plan was to teach department administrators to prepare H petitions. Various departments at the university file hundreds of H-1B work visa petitions a year. This sample lesson explains how to prepare and train department administrators to file complicated immigration petitions. The educational need for this lesson is for department administrators to know how to file H1B petitions, locate necessary forms on the website, know general information about H‐1B visa, fees needed to file H‐1B petition, and determine who qualifies for H‐1B visa. 
Below is my responses on the UDL Guidelines – Educator Checklist.
https://docs1.google.com/document/d/1fgOf18UXTaniLmLm3fDwGeEFCUxj8B1GYJX2VJ18iXg/edit?hl=en#
Resources:
UDL Guidelines
http://www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl/udlguidelines