Final VHS course Reflection.

4/24/2012

Please comment on the entire VHS course experience for this past semester only.
VHS experience: Provide name of course, hours worked per week, etc.
For your course, comment on: favorite assignment and why; least favorite assignment and why; the rigor of this course; favorite thing about the course in general; student participation in the course; effort you made in the course in comparison to other f2f or vhs classes you take or have taken, etc. For students who have already taken a VHS course prior to this semester, how did taking a course Spring Semester differ from the Fall semester.
Any other comments??? Feel free to share, but as always, be polite and considerate. Peace and Bles

12 Comments

Gabby Carson

5/7/2012 01:07:32

Hi! I'm Gabby and the course I took was Ghoulies Ghosties and Long Legged Beasties; Why We Like to be Scared. In a typical week, I only worked about three hours at the most. There was a lot of work, but it was easy enough to not be overwhelmed. My favorite thing about this course is that it was a writing course, so we got to write a lot of creative stories. However, I did not like the fact that we had to write numerous essays. Also, the group work was a let down because I got paired up with other people who would not post any work. I gave the same amount of effort as I did with other classes, and I'm sure my online classmates did as well, since we all participated a good amount. Overall, I really liked the VHS experience and the course that I took.

Maggie Tarmey

5/10/2012 05:28:09

Hi! I’m Maggie and I took Middle School Number Theory: People, Patterns, and Puzzles. I took this course because I did not have the prerequisites for the high school level course. I spent about 10 hours per week on this course. To me, this class felt very light because last semester, I took History and American Popular Music, which I spent much more time working on each week, and that was a more rigorous course. My favorite assignment in this course would probably have been the Gold Bug code. It was extremely difficult, but I felt so proud of myself once I had completed it. My least favorite assignment was the Week 4 Assignment 4: Are You Thinking Yet? because the questions were very complicated and confusing, and the teacher was not very clear with her instructions for the assignment. My favorite thing about this course in general was being able to learn to solve many different types of codes. We learned so many types of enciphering messages and the ways that we learned were so cool to me.
The general student participation in this course was all right, but not spectacular. Only a few people really tried hard and looked like they were showing effort. I thought that the assignments where we had to work with a partner were a bit redundant, because the people in my group that I had to choose from to work with were 3 people that didn’t really do their work, and Wanqing, a friend of mine who also took this course. We would just do our work in class and then post it so our teacher could see that we worked together. I gave more effort in this course than I do in most of my regular face-to-face classes, but I slowly gave less and less effort as this class progressed. The teacher was extremely difficult to deal with, and it made the class very unenjoyable, and it made me not want to accomplish anything. I would only recommend this class to anyone if they didn’t have this teacher. You will be miserable if you have this teacher. If you have a different teacher, the class would probably be awesome and really fun. The work itself was great, but not the people. Hasta Luego!

Josh Kang

5/11/2012 01:42:52

Final Refection on VHS

This past semester, the course I was taking in VHS was “Great Inventions and Scientific Discoveries”. I chose this course because of the fact that I like learning about science, and learning about famous scientists. The favorable amount of hours you should work a week is about 5 hours. Every day during school, you have a separate class that replaces skills and provides you an hour to work every school day. So, in theory, you should be fine with doing your work as long as you work for those 5 hours.
My favorite assignment for the course was probably making web pages giving biographies, and other info based on a scientist’s life and their inventions/discoveries. I am considered a “noob” for creating web pages, however this course provides all the info, and practice needed for creating web pages. My least favorite assignment was probably writing an essay based on James Watson, and Francis Crick. This is because learning what these two partners did, was very challenging and confusing. You see, it is very difficult to write a valid report on someone you don’t really understand.
As a matter of fact, this course was a little rigorous for me. There were supposed to be textbooks the site coordinator was supposed to pass out to all the students. Instead, he photocopied the textbook readings and they were difficult to read because they were such small font, and reading off a computer screen was a little challenging for me.
My favorite thing about taking this course and VHS in general, was how you could communicate with other people taking the course with you. You can ask those questions and even communicate with them out of school by chatting in a whole different chat room. You can also contact you fellow classmates in school if they take VHS as well.

~Josh Kang

Fantahia Lopes

5/11/2012 07:11:18

The name of my course is Career Messages Section MG (SP12). On average the hours I have worked per week is about 6 -8 hours. This course has helped me learn more about my options after high school. This semester I learned what my personality is and what things are important to me. My favorite activity was the surveys, where you find out many interesting things whether it was what you’re personality was or what your job during the crusades would be, whereas my least favorite activity was the interviews some times they did not have all the information needed and also because I am not that type of person who likes talking to a lot of people. My course was easy and hard at the same time. My favorite thing about this course in general is reading the articles given because many of them are very interesting .The student participation in this course is fairly good. The effort I have made in the course compared to other face 2 face classes is way much more than a regular class because Virtual learning has been different than that of a 'face to face' class learning because I learn to be more dependent, learn different things in a regular class with different classmates.

Ailsa Ferland:)

5/11/2012 08:13:24

Hey Everybody! My name is Ailsa and I took the Middle School Number Theory: Peoples, Patterns and Places VHS course. I took this course along with Maggie and Wanqing, and enjoyed myself the majority of the time. My favorite assignment would have to be creating my own cryptogram because it was extremely fun to apply different techniques that we learned during the course to encrypt a saying, proverb, statement, etc. It was interesting to see how many people in my class were able to return my codes into their original form! I had lots of fun learning and doing the rest of the assignments, except for a few of them. Of these assignments, reading and analyzing Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Gold Bug” was my least favorite. It wasn’t that the story was bad, it was just a very long tale written in old English followed by 25 or so questions. Through the good and the bad, each week I worked on this class for about 9 hours tops. Although, like Maggie I had taken a course last semester, Psychology I, which required much more of my time than Number Theory did. Therefore, it wasn't that hard for me to hand everything in on time each week. Overall, I found this virtual experience fun and exciting, and it was a great addition to my face to face classes. Exploring new territory by taking a more advanced-not to mention virtual- class is a very enlightening and enjoyable commitment.
~Ailsa:)

Angela Macksoud

5/16/2012 01:58:04

Hi everybody! I’m Angela Macksoud and I took Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations I worked about 7 hours a week, and my teacher was very helpful! My favorite assignment was the audio assignment because I didn’t know I could record myself, and also it added a very cool aspect to my PowerPoint. My least favorite assignment was adding video, because it was a very complicated process. My favorite thing about the course was learning new things that will help give my PowerPoint some pizzazz! There was A LOT of student participation, in fact, I had almost 2000 messages! I didn’t participate as much as I would have in an f2f class, because my teacher couldn’t call on me surprisingly, or tell you to participate. The only major difference between the fall and spring semester is that we talked A LOT more! This did affect some peoples work, but not that much.

Ava Greenberg

5/16/2012 11:09:15

Hey everyone! I'm Ava and this year I took the course Biology. This was a full year class, not just for one semester. I chose this course because I am interested in all aspects of the human body and other sciences. I plan to become a doctor when I am older, so I thought this would be good knowledge to have.
I spent about 8 hours a week on this course, however, when you love learning about something it doesn't seem a drag at all! If you get most of your work done in class, you shouldn't have a problem getting the work done.
My favorite assignment was when we had to look up an article that had to do with a specific human body system. Then, we would summarize it in our own words and the other classmates could comment and reflect, I learned so much from exploring the different articles and loved the comments! We would do one of these assignments about every 2 weeks, and each time it was a different body system.
I would recommend this course to someone who is willing to do extra work. This is not something that is required, and you will have to do this work on top of all your other school work. This course also covers many topics and if you aren't interested in them, chances are you will not enjoy this class.
Overall, I loved this course! It was my first online class, and I hope to take more in Lincoln High! VHS was everything that I expected and more! Thanks to VHS I am now leaving middle school with even more knowledge I was expected to have.

Wanqing

5/18/2012 06:35:08

Hi! I’m Wanqing and I took Middle School Number Theory: People, Patterns, and Puzzles. I took this course because I enjoy math and puzzles. I spent about 12 hours per week on this course. To me, this class felt very light because I learned most of the content already. My favorite assignment in this course would probably have been the Sherlock Holmes puzzle assignment. It was fun because they were logic puzzles and were not so hard. The least favorite assignment would be the Week 4 Assignment 4: Are You Thinking Yet? because the questions were very confusing. My favorite thing about this course in general was being able to solve codes and puzzles. The group work in this course wasn’t that great because I had 3 people in my group who didn’t do any work, and Maggie who I just did all the work with. I gave this course more effort than my regular classes. I just didn’t really like the teacher because she was being really confusing and difficult to deal with. Overall, I found this virtual experience very fun and enjoyable, and it was a great addition to my face to face classes.
~Wanqing :)

Drew

5/22/2012 01:49:11

The course I did for this semester of VHS was Programming in Visual Basic. Almost every week, the entire week’s worth of work could be completed in about an hour. Some weeks were harder than others, but most weeks were pretty easy to complete. Most weeks had basically the same assignments too. It is hard to decide which assignment was my favorite throughout my course, but I would have to say that creating the program that drew what you typed in the window was my favorite because it was not too hard, but required troubleshooting, and was also fun to play around with when it was finished. My least favorite assignment was probably the first assignment. I disliked the first assignment because it was extremely easy and left you wanting to learn more at the end of the assignment. My course was definitely and easy course that was not rigorous at all. My favorite thing about the course in general was that, when we were making our programs, the direction were left open in some places, and there was room to add interesting things to our program when we had done all the required directions. In some places in the programs, we could decide how we wanted the program to do what it needed to do, and when we were done creating our program, there was always space and time to add special buttons and extra components to our program that we made for the week. This course was very different from my fall course in the way that much less writing was required. In my fall course, writing essays consumed most of the time I spent working on my assignments. In my programming course, a total of about 1 paragraph per week would be typical, but the rest of my time was spent typing code. I would recommend this course to anyone who is interested in programming because it is very fun and you will learn many things about programming.

-Drew Abram

Amanda Broadmeadow

5/23/2012 01:52:49

The course I took for VHS is Mythology: Stories from around the world. I worked hard on my course and enjoyed it a lot. My favorite thing about the course was the creative writing. I enjoyed writing my own myths. My least favorite thing about the course was the group wiki. It was confusing to do but it turned out ok. The course wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I understood most of it. Most people participated well but others were weeks late. I put just as much effort in this course as my face to face classes. I really enjoyed the course.
- Amanda Broadmeadow

Myer Hussain

5/24/2012 11:51:47

I took the course Creating a Successful PowerPoint Presentation. I worked about 3 hours a week, and I got my work done. My favorite assignment was the final project, which I worked extremely hard on. My least favorite assignment were the discussion questions because I didn't learn too much with them. My favorite thing about this course was how we could ask each other questions and get help very quickly. I could have tried harder and I should have. Overall, I liked the course because of how much I learned.

Emily Jacobson

5/24/2012 11:58:04

Hi! My name is Emily Jacobson and I am in 8th grade. This past semester I took Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations. Overall this course was ok. If you don’t know lots about PowerPoint than this is the course for you! It teaches you how to use all the different tools that PowerPoint has to offer. As for the amount of work each week, it varies greatly. The beginning weeks are easy and don’t take a lot of time to complete however once you get into the course and start actually creating your presentation, writing the paragraphs and collecting information, it take a while! Some weeks are easy and quick while some a harder and long. Throughout the 15 weeks we worked one assignment: a 30 slide PowerPoint Presentation about a specific topic. The topic that you chose is from a list. I chose to do my PowerPoint on 6 different countries. There was a ‘Travel Agent’ option and if you checked with Mrs. Vivari, you could pick any six countries you wanted. So, I chose Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. They were all interesting countries to learn about. So really there was only one assignment. All in all, I liked it however it was a lot of work and I worked very hard on it. In the end, it was fun to look at the master piece I had created. So, if you take this course, it is lots of work however it is fun to watch your presentation and look back at the piece you have created. I had already known lots about how to use the different parts of PowerPoint so the lessons weren’t ‘fun’ but they were ok. I learned some new things such as how to create hyperlinks and how to directly insert a video into a PowerPoint. I made a lot of effort in this class however at some points I felt that my core classes were more important so I turned some assignments late however I put a lot of effort into my final presentation. This course wasn’t my favorite. My favorite VHS course was Introduction to Environmental Science. I also took Creating Art History which was good! Even though this was a good, educational course with a great teacher, it was my least favorite of the three. Mrs. DeRiso is such an awesome SC that will help you with anything! Her classroom is a great environment with much discussion!! WE all have created a little family and I am sad to be leaving. Anyways, I encourage everyone who is offered to take VHS to take it!! It is a great experience and a way to learn things you wouldn’t get to learn at LMS! I hope you all join your VHS classes!!
~Emily Jacobson

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Final VHS course Reflection.

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