Synthesis

Flight Path
I began ETEC 565 with a small amount of experience in working with technology and education. I had spent 15 years working as a mechanical engineer before leaving that field to become a teacher. I completed my B.Ed with a minor in Mathematics for Secondary Schools in August of 2010 and started working for the Surrey School District as a teacher-on-call. During this time I decided to enter the MET program in order to learn more about the pedagogy behind technology and education.

As I started the MET program, I wanted to keep an open mind about ETEC 565 to see where it would guide me. Therefore, working from the SECTIONS framework (Bates & Poole, 2003) and the Seven Principles (Chickering & Gamson, 1987), I hypothesized my own framework for learning which I called the EPIC model: Ease of use and reliability; Prompt feedback; Interactivity; and Collaboration and communication. From this model I identified some key aspects that I had hoped to learn about, keeping in mind that these were pre-conceptions of topics I thought would be interesting or important. The topics included: putting together a Moodle site; incorporating formative assessment in technology and education; designing materials and media that promote learner engagement; and investigating new tools that can promote interactivity.

eLearning Toolkit
My eLearning toolkit experience was interesting and stood as good starting point for my study of educational technologies. I found my experience to be somewhere in the middle of where the toolkits were located. The investigations into LMS, Synchronous Communication Tools and Wikis were very helpful to me. With other topics such as Weblogs, mLearning and authoring tools, I found that my existing knowledge was already reasonably solid.

While going through the eLearning toolkits, I naturally started with the topics that I felt I was the least sure of. The LMS toolkit was particularly helpful in setting my awareness on the tools available through the EduTools website. This, coupled with our readings for Unit 3, allowed me to have an understanding of the wide range of uses and frameworks to which an LMS is applied.

The other toolkit that really added to my repertoire of technological tools was the Synchronous Communication Tools. I feel the communication is the cornerstone of eLearning, and this is echoed in the SECTIONS model where various topics depend upon communication. Therefore I went through each tool, many of which were new to me. In particular I was interested in the tools which integrated audio/video conferencing. The power of these tools was exemplified during the Wimba session that our class participated in. From this exploration I saw DimDim as a tool with a lot of potential. Wimba filled this category too, although the pricing for it may be an extreme hurdle for my context (teaching in a secondary school). Luckily I also found out that as an employee of a school district in British Columbia, I get free Elluminate sessions. I ended up using this to great effect in helping classmates of mine who had technical problems in some projects.

As I mentioned above, some of the toolkits weren’t quite as useful to me. I have a decent background with blogging and basic (amateur) video/photo/audio editing. I’ve already been able to use my knowledge in these areas during my work. As a result, I didn’t spend much time on these areas.
The HTML, social software and mLearning toolkits were interesting for me because in each of these I “learned on the job” so to speak. After review the toolkits, I pushed my limits on how to incorporate these tools into my Moodle site. By actually practicing and experimenting with the technologies I managed to learn a great deal. In the case of mLearning, I was slightly pushing the boundaries in where this is heading by attempts to adopting new technologies.

ETEC565
Like many university courses, I found that I could get out of ETEC565 what I put into it. I felt that the structure of the readings and assignments, along with the eLearning toolkits, gave me the flexibility to focus on topics that would benefit my learning the best. Starting the course with the Bates and Chickering readings set a strong foundation for the work the followed and helped provide clarity on the case studies. I can also see myself referring to the SECTIONS model throughout my career, and it is always nice to combine theory with practice. The case studies themselves were mostly helpful and offered a glimpse into the situations that arise in different elearning contexts. During this part of the course it was very interesting to see what my classmates came up with, and how different solutions could be arrived at. Some of the case study discussions were perhaps the most interesting part of ETEC565.

I think ETEC565 is fortunate to have the Moodle LMS project because it acts as a strong central point to the course. For example, I find it very difficult to learn something like HTML coding without having a meaningful, purposeful project attached to it. I am also fortunate in that I have wanted to learn more about developing a Moodle site for almost a year, and this obviously matches up well with ETEC565.

While I really like to collaborate with people with discussions and ideas, I’m glad that ETEC565’s big project was not a group project. I feel that the discussion forums offered a lot of cross-pollination in ideas and perspectives which served a collaborative purpose. Having most of my projects and assignments as individual work gave me the flexibility I like, and following the comment I made above on the structure of ETEC565, this allowed me to get the most out of the course.

Next Steps
I still need to work out some of the details with Moodle, but one of my first big next steps will be to migrate the content that I created for the ETEC565 Moodle site onto my own Moodle server. Unfortunately I do not know how automatic this process can be, and whether if database tables can be copied or not. If not, I’ll have to recreate all the activities and resources again. Once this is done, I plan on adding to my Moodle site every time I create new content for whatever teaching I am doing. I am not clear on how far I will take this process, as we have learned that content for f2f delivery is different from online learning content. However, I think I have seen some ways that new content can be made flexible enough such it can easily be adapted to both contexts. This should be markedly different from the idea of taking f2f content and making it suitable for online learning.

Continuing with Moodle, I will see how I can use my Moodle site for blended learning; however, since I am a new teacher I will need to proceed carefully and use this technology wisely. Perhaps the online content will be presented as tutorial material. At the very least, the Moodle site will operate as a forum for class updates and due dates, and offer the idea that there are no excuses for not knowing about course milestones: in other words, it can act as effective asynchronous communication. Whatever I do with the material past this will have to be well thought out, clear, and have a pedagogical rationale.

In conjunction with the above, I have also started to explore Mahara , which is an e-portfolio management system that I believe is built around the same open-source code as Moodle. I am using Mahara to collect content from my ETEC565 e-portfolio site, and this may ultimately transform into an ETEC590 project. From a career point of view, I can use my ETEC565 artifacts with Mahara to track my professional development.

Another aspect of professional development is my use of web2.0 social networks to learn about education and eLearning. As a teacher-on-call, I do not have regular work yet so I am not able to collaborate very much with co-workers in the workplace. However, by participating in blog and twitter communities, I am able to continue my dialogue on these topics. This has already helped me pursue my interest in mobile computing/education, and I expect this to continue as the technology progresses.

I am very interested in devices and technology, and will be exploring new options and tools as I become aware of them. Some of my explorations can be seen in a presentation I have as part of a project for ETEC512, found here: http://dryfly.ca/etec512/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=35&Itemid=41.

Finally, I will be continuing my course work in the MET program. I have not looked ahead past this term and I expect to reduce my course workload to only one course per term while working. The MET program, along with continuing my communication with various online learning agencies (school board distance learning centers, the Ministry of Education) will keep career options open for me as I continue to teach and learn about technology and education.

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