While the learner is at the centre of education, and is deeply connected to the educator, it is important to also consider the other parties and challenges that exist in the larger educational system. Chickering & Ehrmann (1996) write that "technology is not enough" and identify institutional policy, and legislators as important components for technologies to be used effectively and efficiently. The implementation of their Seven Principles must go beyond the educator and student: "it is appropriate for legislators and other benefactors to ask whether institutions are striving to improve educational practice consistent with the Seven Principles" (Chickering & Erhmann, 1996, para. 35-36).
How can I be a more engaged member of a community?
A more personal goal for this course is to more actively engage as a member of the course community. The ISTE standards recognize the importance of educators also being a "learner". This includes active participation in global and local networks (ISTE, 2017). In other courses I have struggled with engagement in discussion forums because the value was not always apparent to me. Now that I am in the end stages of the M.E.T program, I think I would be remiss to not be as engaged as possible.<br />
I hope to leverage the expertise and experience of my educator peers in this course to help be more engaged and to understand where my first goal (to be a supporter) fits in today's context.
How can ETEC524 help me become a supporter of a digital-age teaching professional?
I have no formal educator experience, and no current desire to become an educator per se. I am, however, a supporter of educators. As such, I think the value in this course for me is to understand more deeply the challenges and also the perspective of educators who adopt technology. I will have to find resources that might help me understand the pedagogical perspective where I may already have technology understanding. The ISTE educator standard 1c is to stay current with research including findings from learning sciences. In areas of the course where I feel I have the right understanding of technology, I hope to pursue relevant research that connects the technology to pedagogy that might help me understand perspectives outside of my own.
My Flight Path
About Me
I am a Research Analyst within a faculty at the University of British Columbia. I work with educators, educational technologists, and instructional designers to extract, analyze, and use data that can improve teaching and learning.
My overarching goal for the MET program has been to learn more about the Education of Educational Technology. My background is a technical one, and while I work within a higher education institution, I think it is valuable to have a better understanding of the education perspective from the educator’s lens. I wrote in my application to the MET program, and I still believe that that technology should be an enabling force, but the application should stem from principles about the context of its adoption, where in education the core context is the learner.
As a member of a team our main priority is to support educators. I believe in order to do this effectively it is important to “speak the language” to both understand the educator’s point of view, goals, intentions etc. but also to be able to effectively communicate and promote data-driven decision making and effective technology implementation.
My ETEC 524 Goals (Flight Path)
How can ETEC524 help me become a supporter of a digital-age teaching professional?
I have no formal education experience, and no current desire to become an educator per se. I am, however, a supporter of educators. As such, I think the value in this course for me is to understand more deeply the challenges and also the perspective of educators who adopt technology. I will have to find resources that might help me understand the pedagogical perspective where I may already have technology understanding. The ISTE educator standard 1c is to stay current with research including findings from learning sciences. In areas of the course where I feel I have the right understanding of technology, I hope to pursue relevant research that connects the technology to pedagogy that might help me understand perspectives outside of my own.
How can I be a more engaged member of a community?
A more personal goal for this course is to more actively engage as a member of the course community. The ISTE standards recognize the importance of educators also being a “learner”. This includes active participation in global and local networks (ISTE, 2017). In other courses I have struggled with engagement in discussion forums because the value was not always apparent to me. Now that I am in the end stages of the M.E.T program, I think I would be remiss to not be as engaged as possible.
I hope to leverage the expertise and experience of my educator peers in this course to help be more engaged and to understand where my first goal (to be a supporter) fits in today’s context. I also wonder how I could possibly use some of the f Canvas itself to encourage my own
How can I go beyond the educator and the learner?
While the learner is at the centre of education, and is deeply connected to the educator, it is important to also consider the other parties and challenges that exist in the larger educational system. Chickering & Ehrmann (1996) write that “technology is not enough” and identify institutional policy, and legislators as important components for technologies to be used effectively and efficiently. The implementation of their Seven Principles must go beyond the educator and student: “it is appropriate for legislators and other benefactors to ask whether institutions are striving to improve educational practice consistent with the Seven Principles” (Chickering & Erhmann, 1996, para. 35-36).
What do I need to know about “digital” vs. “mobile” technologies?
Looking ahead in the course, there is a module regarding mobile technologies which states that mobile technologies are not delivery platforms. I hope to investigate where the difference is today. My laptop is mobile, my cell phone has the Canvas app – what are the key distinctions that are important when discussing the differences or similarities in these technologies? Do educators see a distinction where students may no longer? Is there a more important semantic difference that I am unaware of or have I created a distinction that I need to break down?
What connections can I make to my previous ETEC courses?
I am pleased to be taking this course later in my M.E.T journey, because the previous courses have provided a better groundwork for the technology we will learn about to be built on top of. I see one of my goals of this course as making the connection between the technology and what has been learned so far. I will challenge myself to reference what I have learned in previous courses as well as specific articles or readings from those courses as relevant to the current module in ETEC 524.
References
Chickering, A. W., & Ehrmann, S., C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6. Retrieved May 16, 2021, from http://www.aahea.org/articles/sevenprinciples.htm
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). (2017). Standards for teachers. Retrieved May 16, 2021, from https://www.iste.org/standards/for-educators
Getting a Fitbit: A New Toy
I got a new Fitbit, it has a face! (a screen that lets you interact with it).
The new Fitbit replaces one where there really was no interactivity, just simple lights indicating your step range (based on your goal), or various light and vibration settings that provide notifications.
There are two audiences for this blog: other individuals like myself and people who would find themselves uncomfortable exploring a new device without guidance. I have some experience with the particular object (with Fitbits, step counters etc) but I am being introduced to a more advanced version. I am used to digital devices where you interact physically through a variety of actions to achieve intended results. I have a smartphone and am mostly used to the idea of navigation using touch screen and some buttons. In addition, I have grown up being introduced to new technology and new devices, so I don’t have any fear about “breaking it” as I play around. In my experience I have found that generations who did not grow up with smart phones/devices are worried that because they are unfamiliar with the device they will do something wrong causing something to go wrong (that they couldn’t fix due to the same worry).
The experience that I already have means that I have certain expectations about functionality that I will be exploring and questioning as I use the new device.
Smart Devices: The Terminology
There are a few terms that have become part of the everyday vernacular of smart devices. However, these terms aren’t always intuitive unless you a) already know them or b) experience them with the device in question.
Swiping
You can swipe left (from the right of the screen to the left) or right (from the left of the screen to the right). The gif below demonstrates one swipe right and then multiple swipes left (“swipe right” has become popularized from the app Tinder as it indicates “liking” someone). This interaction is also possible on the Fitbit. You can navigate from the ‘Home’ screen by swiping left to see a series of activity options.
You can swipe up (from the bottom to the top) or swipe down (from the top to the bottom). The gif below shows the motion of “swiping up” (apparently, swiping up is now popular on Instagram ad stories as swiping up will bring you to the website for the advertisement).
Tapping
You can ‘tap’ the screen to make a selection based on the icon you are tapping. In addition tapping could mean ‘next’ on some of the Fitbit menus. In these cases you aren’t necessarily making a selection or moving to an entirely new menu, rather you are showing various options for the same display.
Using a Fitbit: The Basics
The Fitbit is a screen with a button on a wrist band. You can press the button. You can wear (or hold) the wrist band. You can touch the screen: you can tap or swipe the screen.
Two terms that I will be using someone interchangeably are menu and display. When you look at the face of the Fitbit (the screen itself) it is sometimes providing you information (display) and sometimes providing you a menu of options. As I explored the device the line between display/menu became a little blurry (if I can tap the screen and it changes what I can see, is that a menu or a display?).
To interact with the Fitbit display you can tap, swipe, or press the button. There are some indicators of the options available for interaction with the Fitbit, but not always: there are some icons that you can tap, but some that are just providing you information, there are some screens where you can swipe up/down/left/right but some where doing so does not change anything.
In my experience over the past few days of use, you do get used to what the device can do and how to interact with it. However, I still find myself swiping on menus that don’t change, and tapping on icons that don’t produce an effect. I found there are some patterns of indicators (number of dots indicating the number of menus you can swipe through, some arrows indicating you can swipe up, and even some text instruction to press the back button when I fiddle to long on a screen that doesn’t produce a result), but ultimately you just have to keep using the device.
To learn to use this model of Fitbit you could follow an exhaustive tutorial that indicates every single option (I tried, but ultimately failed, to diagram all of those options). But, it would be easier to gain a general understanding of how you can interact and what responses you can expect from those interactions. I have explained the main important interactions below.
You can press the button.
There is only one button on the Fitbit. It is found on the left edge, I refer to it as the “back button”. When you initially press this button it will bring you to the “Home” screen/the watch face of the Fitbit. Pressing the button on the Fitbit has two functions: activating the screen or ‘stepping back’ to a previous menu when you have ‘tapped’ to get to a new menu.
You can ‘tap’ the screen.
Tapping can take two forms – I describe these as
- Tapping an icon: an image that looks like it will bring you to another menu/the next option in a menu. The ‘tapping’ action cannot be undone, when you move to a new menu there is a new set of options to select, instead you can use the back button to return to a previous menu in the cases where you have tapped an icon to move forward.
- Tapping to “scroll” doesn’t change the menu (see how it is still showing the time/date on the screen?) but does change what information is being presented. In these cases you still cannot ‘untap’ but you can continue to tap to move through all of the display/statistics options. Pressing the ‘back button’ in cases of tap scrolling don’t move you back a step, but take you to the original menu.
You can swipe.
Up, down, left or right. In general, if you swipe up to change the view, you can swipe down to go back and the same applies for swiping right or left.
If you imagine that you are swiping to “pull” content from a direction, then the swiping direction makes a bit more sense.
Swipe up to pull the next display up or to ‘scroll’ through options.
Swipe down to pull the next display down or to ‘scroll’ through options. There seemed to be relatively few cases where there are displays that you swipe down to view, it is more often associated with a list that you can ‘scroll’ up and down through.
Swipe left and right to explore more options. In many cases the Fitbit will display some number of dots at the top of the screen as you are swiping left or right. The number of dots indicate the number of menu options. For example, below there are 3 menus to select various options from.
All gifs were made and hosted via GIPHY
Too Much Navigation: A Diagram
It is fairly to common to explore a device by following a tutorial. Hopefully in the previous post I gave a good basic summary of how you can interact with the Fitbit without having to dive into the details of all of the possible options. By understanding the basics of interactions and the general rules around these interactions, you should be able to explore the device on your own.
Less common would be to understand a device by tracking what every single option does. The last Fitbit that I had was simple. You tap once to see how many dots there are. You can tap twice to cancel a notification (it vibrates based on certain notifications). That’s basically it. You can understand the action and result at once. I wanted to know – what would it look like to track EVERY (or almost every) action and the result with the new Fitbit. I also had to consider how to show this. I attempted below to create a somewhat interactive diagram that demonstrates some of the functionality (there was too much to track all of it).
The following diagram shows some of the functionality of the Fitbit. (Hover over image to activate options and zoom in). Starting at the HOME screen you can see how different interactions bring you to different screens. The complexity of the diagram highlights how extensive the navigation options are.
Reminder, the actions are:
Press – the back button
Swipe – up/down/left/right
Tap – icon/scroll
The diagram above was made using draw.io and is hosted in my Google Drive. It could be set up to be ‘shared’ so that others could extend the diagram by tracking further navigation.