As BC’s new curriculum is being ushered in many teachers are finding drastic changes to certain courses. One of the courses that received a major overhaul is the Physical Education curriculum. The changes are so great that this course has actually undergone a name change to Physical and Health Education (PHE) to reflect additions to the curriculum. Not only will health and nutrition now be taught in PHE, but elements of online safety and community building are also being added. The course prototype, as well as the content module, reflect the new strands and outcomes within the PHE course. The fully developed content module lies within the strand of Social and Community Health and will focus on Digital Citizenship. The choice to develop a digital citizenship unit comes from a concern found in many middle school classrooms. With the amount of time that students currently spend online playing games and engaging one another in social networks, a certain degree of digital drama finds its way into the classroom. Misunderstandings occur, friends are added to the misunderstanding and bullying sometimes result; all these factors affect learning in the classroom meaning that it is becoming increasingly important for students to learn to be good digital citizen and learn how to behave in an online setting. Furthermore students need to know how to be safe online and how to protect themselves from predators, cyber bullies and digital drama.
The navigation of this course should be fairly straightforward. The course is divided into strands based on the curriculum. Each strand has it’s own landing page. From there units related to the strand will be linked. Each unit will also have a landing page where students can find the outcomes and objectives for the unit, a brief description of what they will be learning as well as a list of linked lessons will also be found there. Students can also access units and lessons using the hover over feature in the top menu; for example hovering over the strand will show the units for that strand, hovering over the unit will show the individual lessons. The hover feature may not work on all mobile devices, which is why the lessons will also be linked on the landing page of each unit, and units on the landing page for each strand.
This content module is broken into 7 lessons; each lesson will take 1 week to complete. The unit is broken up into the following lessons: Lesson 1: Cyberspace and Citizenship, Lesson 2: Netiquette, Lesson 3: Copyright, Lesson 4: Online Safety, Lesson 5: Personal and Private Information, Lesson 6: Messaging with Manners, Lesson 7: Cyber Bullying and Digital Drama. Each week students will work through a number of activities (usually between 3 and 4) where they will watch short video clips, read through bits of information, participate in discussion forums, take quizzes online and complete assignments that they will post onto the WordPress site.
Assessment of and for learning is one of the most important aspects of teaching and must be considered when designing any course, unit or lesson. Assessment will occur on a lesson basis. Within each lesson students will complete 3-4 activities, where at least one of them will be assessed beyond a simple completion mark. Once students have completed a lesson and posted their assignment for the week each of these will be graded. Additionally, their participation in any discussion forums will also be graded. Criteria for discussions and posts will be established through rubrics and discussion in class. Through the “Grader” plugin the instructor will be able to leave private comments visible only to the author when they are logged in; this is how the majority of assignments will be marked and how feedback will be given to the students. There are also 2 quizzes that students will take throughout the course. These are both on a Google form where students will identify themselves only with a first name to negate any FOIPPA issues. Additionally students will be also complete 2 larger assignments, one in Lesson 4 where students will create a poster and a final project at the end of lesson 7 where students will create a Public Service Announcement. These two projects are larger projects and will weighted as such in the unit. Rubrics for these larger assignments are also provided online.
Upon the completion of weekly lesson tasks students will be automatically awarded badges. Students will need to complete a certain number of steps in order to earn each of these badges; these steps are outlined on the lesson page and can also be reviewed by clicking on individual badges. There are 2 cases where badges will need to be manually awarded by the teacher once the assignment has been marked as these assignments are larger. Furthermore there is a “SuperCitizen” badge that students also have the opportunity to receive once they have completed all the course requirements. Students will also have their participation and posts graded. Furthermore, in order for students to do well in a course, they will need to know the expectations for their assignments. For this reason rubrics have been created and are posted whenever there is an assignment that would require further explanation. There are four rubrics that have been posted. The first outlines the expectations for an assignment post, the second the expectations for participating in discussions, the third outlines the expectations their poster assignment in Lesson 4 and the fourth for their for their final project in Lesson 7.
Communication between teacher and students will be a combination of written and verbal instruction. Since students will be spending time in the classroom working online on this unit the teacher has the benefit to give verbal instructions, feedback and answer any questions the students have as they arise. Also, the instructor can, and will, leave feedback in the form of comments on students individual posts, both for the purpose of grading and engaging in discussion. Finally, email will also be used to clarify any misunderstandings that students could have. The instructor will also participate in discussions through forums and the discussion posts that students create. Students can also communicate with each other in similar ways, in fact, students will be expected to comment on each other’s posts and respond to each other’s comments on the discussion forums as well. The instructor will need to monitor discussions so as to ensure that students are following proper netiquette and communicating respectfully online.