Well…another semester has come to an end and I find myself asking…where did all that time go!? It has been a whirlwind for me and I have learned so much about the content, about pedagogy and about myself. Reading through my ‘Flight Path’ tonight, I was laughing at how accurate I was with setting my sights on certain targets in the course and feeling proud of my accomplishments over the last term.
Flight Path Review & Course Overview
The biggest thing I took from this course was the opportunity to experiment with digital and networked technologies. Natasha did an excellent job of offering different resources and opportunities for interaction for students. She was always only a short email away if we had questions that the collaborative group could not answer and this was very professional and helpful. Thank you Natasha for being a great role model in the online teaching and learning world. I am not a Twitter lover as I have experimented with it for personal use and also through Twitter chats in other courses and in my own courses but I still appreciate the additional avenue to create community. I also did not get into the Mattermost Chat feature but will wait to see if the University goes this route. As always, the more tools I am exposed to, the better but for the purposes of this course I did not get to try everything I wanted.
My first course goal in my Flight Path was to experiment with Moodle. At the time when I created this goal I had only a small idea of how the course worked and so I did not get a chance to experiment further with Moodle in this course…I hope it is in my near future!
My second goal was to work with Google Apps for Education. This is the platform I ended up choosing for my Intro and Content Module assignments. After creating both these modules, asking “Google” at least one hundred questions and learning from my peers who were using the same platform, I can say that I feel I understand the functionality of Google Classroom, both in terms of positive features, limitations and its ability to perform in my particular teaching circumstances. As I have mentioned in previous posts, Google Classroom is not an LMS that would work for my fully online learners. I would use it for my face-to-face and blended learners in a heartbeat. It needs a few fixes as many of us picked up on right away but they are headed in a neat direction…one where the traditional LMS does not rule all and attachments are made easy! In my other course, ETEC 522, I was able to experiment with Google Sites as well but I have not made my way to Google Expeditions yet as it did not fit in with my course content module….I plan to head there soon!
My third goal was to work with Fresh Grade. It is something I am implementing in my current teaching practice as I outlined in my Flight Path. I did not work with Fresh Grade in ETEC 565A but I did use it over the course of the last 6 weeks during my first report card season and I enjoyed aspects of the program as did my parents…still more exploring to do here.
I found that throughout the course there were a few standout projects that informed my practice on subsequent projects and work. The small group discussions were much easier for me to manage and gave me excellent insight into the thoughts and ideas of my peers. The frameworks we worked on as a group at the beginning of the course were useful in informing practice moving forward (Thank you SECTIONS model) but at this point, that seems like a separate course. I think the ITSE standards helped me a great deal as they were broad enough that I could apply them to my own practice in many different contexts. I was fortunate to co-lead a professional development project at my school this fall on constructing a school-wide teacher growth plan and I used the ITSE standards as a guide for this process. I also found Chickering and Ehrmann’s (1996) seven principles useful in the same manner as the ITSE standards. As a secondary teacher, I believed that I would be preparing for the implementation of the new curriculum in September 2017. Recently, this implementation has been delayed until September 2018 which gives secondary teachers in British Columbia further time to explore the curriculum and how to best utilize it in their classrooms. For me, as a blended and online teacher, it gives me time to develop courses with a technology and critical thinking focus. Throughout my MET courses this fall, the new BC curriculum played a significant role in informing my practice and I constantly referred to it when creating my course intro and content modules.
Next Steps
Ahhh…next steps. Well, first and foremost, I will be reviewing others posts to add to my ongoing list of resources, readings, cool links, etc., to check out in my “free time”…ha!!
I will be moving forward with knowledge of Google Classroom and requesting that we buy a license for one of our programs as I believe it would be beneficial in this particular setting. I have to attend a Google conference now…there was so much talk of it in the course and I need to see what the hype is all about!
I will be moving onto ETEC 565M and ETEC 590, my final two courses in the MET program and will take December to decompress (Sigggh….thanks Scott!) and travel (off to Kauai for two weeks over the break!) and come back refreshed and ready to tackle a few awesome topics in educational technology. I believe this course benefited me in many ways…it was the most demanding of any of the MET courses I have taken so far but also one of the most rewarding. I will continue to work on my course (4 more modules to go) and I will be busy researching how I can offer the course in different platforms and securely for use in different schools with different LMS’. It is a daunting process but step by step it is one that I am passionate in pursuing!
Although there were many references and readings in the course, the ones I have included below are my “go-to’s” from this course and are bookmarked and ready to dive deeper into in my professional life as well as my MET life. These resources guided the course for me and grounded my ideas in solid pedagogy. I love the flexibility of them in application to various contexts of practice and will surely be referencing them in the future.
Thanks everyone for being so thoughtful in your posts and helping me to learn! The digital stories were my favourite. You people are creative and persistent!
References
Bates, T. (2014). Choosing and using media in education: The SECTIONS model. In Teaching in digital age. Retrieved from https:// opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/9pedagogical-differences-between-media/
British Columbia Ministry of Education. (2016) British Columbia New Curriculum Guide Retrieved from BC Government’s Curriculum website at: https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/science/6
Chickering, A. W., & Ehrmann, S. C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. AAHE bulletin, 49, 3-6.
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). (2008). Standards for teachers. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/standards-for-teachers