Author Archives: Britt Hanson

Final Reflection: Looking Back, Moving Forward

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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

 

Assignment #4 Reflection – Digital Story & Course Content Module

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Here is my content module on personal emergency preparedness: https://classroom.google.com/c/MjcwNzExODcyMFpa/t/MjgzMjg1NzQ1M1pa

This module/unit would fit in to my course plan as module 4 and covers the topics of risk assessment and personal emergency planning.

My Experience with Google Classroom

My adventure with Google Classroom as an option for an LMS began with my interest and daily use of Google Apps for personal and educational use. I routinely use Google Docs in my English and Independent Studies Classes. I use Google Earth ALL the time in Social Studies. I use Google Slides if I need to put together a hassle-free presentation. Gmail is the email of choice for me and my friends and I find the functionality of Google products to be forward-thinking and simple to use. I have to try the Google virtual reality platforms that are coming out (Expedition and the Google Cardboard Googles with my students — thanks Trish for sharing all this). I encourage my family, friends and students to get on board with Google. That being said, I was a rookie to Google Classroom. I have never worked for an institution that had access to a license and it was a foreign platform to me so I stepped outside my LMS comfort zone for this course and gave another Google product a shot.

My experience with Classroom was not as seamless as my other experiences with Google. In fact, I was a bit disappointed throughout my explorations in the introduction module and the content module. I found that Google classroom was not as functional as other LMS’ I have used but during my reflection in the introductory module, I realized others felt the same way and that Google Classroom cannot be considered a fully functional LMS at this point in time. This poses a dilemma for me. Although I have read countless articles through the MET program on the death of the LMS and the rise of other tools that together construct a course platform, I am still siding with the LMS for my purposes. I teach mainly in a fully online setting and my expectations are that a LMS will have full functionality for teacher and students and both groups have the option of bringing in outside apps and resources to add to the experience. Google Classroom fell short for me. Rearranging items is difficult and it also makes it difficult to teach with any amount of text since you cannot highlight, bold, etc., and the average teenage brain has tuned out after the first few sentences in the standard format.

Digital Story

Why was this the right tool for you to use to tell your story, from a pedagogical perspective?

For my digital story, I decided to use Videoscribe. It was a challenge but I like the end result. I wanted a platform that was able to give an unit introduction using both pictures and voice-over. I have previously seen tools like Videoscribe during my undergrad with Sir Ken Robinson’s talks put to animation. I thought they were very neat and researched these tools a little bit at the time. There were not many! Fast forward 6 or 7 years and there is a ton of tools, so many it is hard to choose. I liked that this app had everything rolled into one. There are other apps and tools I was looking into such as ‘screencastomatic’ that voices over and writes on your video’s. I would like to explore this tool as well but I did not want to create a separate video for this project so decided to stick with Videoscribe. I like the functionality of the app and believe it is something I could use to deliver content to students but also to flip the model and have students create content.

How did you purposefully select this for your storytelling tool, in pedagogical terms?

I purposefully selected the tool using some of the technological principles that Chickering and Ehrmann discuss in their 1996 article as it was fresh in my mind from this course and other courses in the MET program. I particularly focused on #6 – Good practice communicates high expectations and #7 – Good practice respects diverse talents and ways of learning. I wanted to use a technological tool that was interesting, captured attention and focused on communication the goals for the unit as well as was stimulating more than traditional text or type. I focused on the new BC curriculum as well (only to find out it is delayed another year for secondary shortly after creating the video…) because I wanted to create a tool that was relevant in the 21st century learning environment. Although I do not believe it is our role as teachers to compete with instagram and snapchat and constant visual stimuli, it is our role to introduce 21st century learning tools that could help students create on their own, think critically, and experiment with technology.

How would this story work within a course that you teach (or would like to teach) based on pedagogical arguments?

This story is subject specific for Emergency Preparedness 11 and acts as an unit overview. I am very interested in creating more of these for different aspects of courses I teach. I currently am the Independent Directed Studies (IDS) teacher for my school and since almost all of our IDS courses are online, students sometimes struggle with creating the learning contract and the self-direction that comes with this course more than any other courses I have taught or that exist in our current school system. I think creating a video to discuss the expectations, go over the contract, and help students understand their role as producer of a learning goal and course content would be very helpful to both the student and the teacher.

Content Module

The content module I chose to complete for my course was the fourth module out of five. It focused on personal emergency preparedness; specifically, understanding and assessing risks and creating personal emergency plans. This content module is aimed at high school students in grade 11 or 12, around 16-18 years old. In my teaching experience, many students at this age are not prepared for the post-high school world in terms of critical thinking. I strive to create an atmosphere of social constructive learning and critical thinking within my current teaching practices. I have moved away from traditional ‘sage on the stage’ or text heavy lessons and instead provided resources and opportunities for social construction of knowledge. I do not think this is an appropriate practice to dive into without offering the students gradual release of responsibility. In my courses, as well as in this content module, the assumption is that learner would be teacher led to begin with and by the time they reached unit four learning is mostly student driven. As Anderson (2008) suggests “a teacher makes efforts to gain an understanding of students’ pre-existing knowledge, including any misconceptions that the learner starts with in their construction of new knowledge” and builds from this platform to create “learner centered” opportunities for learning.

With the content module, I appreciated the two options I used for creating discussion within the course. I used Google groups to be able to group students and offer them a platform for communication to work on a project. I used the simple question format that is built into Google Classroom to spark a discussion using the comments section. I went a little further and asked students to upload an image to their post as well. I also feel that images are great conversation starters.

I found it difficult to upload images, documents and links in a unique way within Google classroom. It would be nice if they had alternate views for items so you can really showcase them. Arranging items is difficult as I previously mentioned in my introductory module post…drag and drop would be much better.

It is implied in my discussion posts that they are graded on the participation guidelines of the course but it would be nice if Google Classroom offered an option for grading within all posts. They offer a timeline option but not an assessment piece. Rubrics (if necessary) would need to be attached to items and percentages would need to be written in the optional instructions. This is an area where I definitely prefer a more traditional LMS.

Overall, my experience with Google Classroom and my digital story as an excellent learning experience. I worked hard to learn several new technologies through this process and am pleased with the end result and the understanding of the new technology I utilized.

References

Anderson, T. (2008). Towards a theory of online learning. Theory and practice of online learning, 2, 15-44.

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.

Digital Story: Videoscribe

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Hi Everyone,

Here is my digital story using Videoscribe. I created this entirely through the Videoscribe App on my Ipad (as I wanted to see the accessibility of this for students) and it proved to be difficult on the tech side more than the creation side.

I really think digital stories are a useful tool but am excited to try more options!

I hope you like it!

Britt

 

Assignment #3: Intro Module Using Google Classroom

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Wow, what a few weeks that was! I have used Google Apps for Education many times and developed several courses in D2L and Canvas but I have never used Google Classroom. It was a big learning curve despite being familiar with most Google Apps. A big thanks to Fernando for his work in setting up the accounts for everyone interested in this platform, it was really great to play around.

Overall, I really enjoyed exploring Google Classroom but spent a great deal of time ‘googling’ the various features, watching videos from Google and other teachers, instructors and users on the features and functions and ultimately I had to remind myself that my introductory module does not have to be perfect as it is an experiment in my learning…and an experiment it was. I thoroughly enjoy learning the features and functionality of different Learning Management Systems and wish I could play in all of them but time does not permit and this was very evident in the time I invested in Google Classroom without actually building anything worthwhile at first.

The purpose of my project is to a part assignment #3 and part a personal passion project I have had in my mind for awhile but have not had the time to begin. I decided to create a course that will be relevant to my students and students across BC and to offer it in a fully online, asynchronous format. I chose this format for two reasons:

1.) Many emergency preparedness resources are present through e-learning successfully

2.) I want to sell the course province wide and believe this would be the best enrollment strategy for the online schools I plan to work with (this model could change if face-to-face schools wanted to do a blended model).

I asked myself when making this decision…how would I learn this material most efficiently _Best Practices in Online Course Design and Delivery, n.d.), and it is not in a particular time frame (synchronous course format) but over time and at my own interest rate. I delved deep into Brinthaupt (2014) and the Course Delivery Decision Model. I highly recommend this resources.

I decided to take this opportunity to start a course outline and information while learning all about Google Classroom. The course will incorporate natural disaster information relevant to BC and provide students with case studies and information and skills around personal preparedness and community and regional preparedness. I believe this course is important and would like to market it to students across BC in an online and possibly blended format (a useful tool to have for teachers who wish to teach this course for the first time as the content is there and adaptations to individual circumstances can be made).

As I want this course to be meaningful for my students and formatted in such a way that the content is proactive, I decided to create an introductory module including a “question” and “introductory discussion” and a “knowledge quiz” for the course to pique student interest. Honestly, I do not feel comfortable creating a quiz for a unit in which I am still unsure about the content or a course I am unsure about the content and a quiz is never my go-to assessment tool as a teacher. I did not feel that this tool was relevant to my context, vision or course goals but that a “pre-course knowledge quiz” was useful.

What I Like About Google Classroom

  • I thought that the addition of “topics” on the left side of the page made for easy navigation.
  • It is very simply to add documents online for students, to share and to collaborate
  • Allows you to go paperless and use Google Apps for Education
  • Students gain relevant online skills in a popular classroom
  • The Forms App was easy to use to create quizzes
  • When students hand in work it seems to go to a classroom folder which is easy to keep track of

What I Had Trouble With in Google Classroom

  • Cannot change font, bold, etc…this was frustrating and seems like a simple programming fix…it is necessary while high school students that important instructions are highlighted
  • I did not find the discussion tool I chose, google groups extremely intuitive or handy…may choose to link outside unless tool improves in terms of ease of use
  • I had trouble changing the group name and was not able to do so after following several internet websites instructions…I am wondering if I do not have full permissions?
  • When organizing and ordering documents, there is a “move to top” feature but this could be improved with a drag and drop system instead
  • There is no option in the “Forms Quiz” for a matching question. This is frustrating as it was listed in the criteria but in the grand scheme, I do not believe matching questions are beneficial to student learning and understand that maybe it is outdated and Google is responding to this

Please check out my site here: https://classroom.google.com/c/MjcwNzExODcyMFpa and any feedback is warmly welcomed!!

 

References

Best Practices in Online Course Design and Delivery. (n.d.). Manuscript, South Oregon University. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://www.sou.edu/distancelearning/SOU DEC Best Practices.pdf

Boettcher, J. V., Dr. (2011, May). Designing for Learning: Ten Best Practices for Teaching Online Quick Guide for New Online faculty. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://www.designingforlearning.info/services/writing/ecoach/tenbest.html

Brinthaupt, T. M., Clayton, M. A., Draude, B. J., & Calahan, P. T. (2014). How Should I Offer This Course? The Course Delivery Decision Model (CDDM). Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 10(2). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://jolt.merlot.org/vol10no2/brinthaupt_0614.pdf

 

 

 

 

Reflection for Assignment #2: LMS Rubric Evaluation

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Completing this assignment as a group was an excellent learning experience for me. I was happy to complete an assignment I was familiar with, a rubric, but in the context of an LMS evaluation.

I enjoyed working with each member of my group as they were all extremely hard working and professional. Many of my group members were also educators and were familiar with creating rubrics and using them for assessment. I find that rubrics require a specific amount of detail and language to create clear and concise criteria and everyone in my group possessed these skills. It was easier for me wrap my head around the concept of an LMS evaluation rubric with group discussion and input. As a secondary humanities teacher, I create rubrics for almost all of my course assignments and projects and I always find them useful in giving students the opportunity for a clear and guided self-assessment. Rubrics also aid in the evaluation of tools and student work. In my personal work, I find that group projects are better quality and the guidelines and criteria are followed more closely when they are described in rubric format. During this assignment, I appreciated the opportunity to work more closely with the SECTIONS model
(Bates, 2014) to create our rubric and believe this is a tool I will use in the future in the context of my school as we look to switch from D2L to another LMS and in my personal course development. Choosing the LMS that is the right fit for your teaching style, course content and activities, and is simple and functional for students to interact with is critical in creating quality online courses and learning experiences.

Rubrics are plentiful but many do not do personal justice to the criteria and need to be adjusted, leaving a great deal of work for teachers. As I am also taking ETEC 522, creating an online sharing rubric course may be a venture I will have to pursue.

I look forward to working with this group again and I thank Trish for her leadership with this assignment!

References

Bates, T. (2014a). Pedagogical differences between media. In Teaching in digital age. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/chapter-8-pedagogical-differences-between-media/

Bates, T. (2014b). Choosing and using media in education: The SECTIONS model. In Teaching in digital age. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/9-pedagogical-differences-between-media/

Assignment #1: Flight Path
Britt Hanson
September 18th, 2016

The proposed content of ETEC 565A had me excited from the description when I first entered MET. Unlike the core courses, I believe the content of this course moves beyond the academic to the practical and allows users to try and test which technology will work best for them in their unique individual contexts.
Many of the issues tackled in this course directly relate to my current teaching position at Navigate/NIDES as a blended learning and online teacher. Part of my role in the school is the curriculum development coordinated and in this role I do a great deal of technology and software selection as well as supporting and implementing course design and development projects at the secondary level. I am very familiar with the inner workings of D2L and have designed and ever-greened many courses with this platform. I am also a D2L ‘super administrator’ at my school and this allows me to understand the functions of D2L beyond the role of a course teacher. Through my undergraduate degree and now the MET program, I am familiar with Blackboard Collaborate as a learner in this system but have never experimented with the platform from the perspective of a teacher or course developer. I am also familiar with the learning management system, CANVAS, as I have built a course for school district use on this platform. I would, however, be interested in learning about MOODLE and its capabilities, as well as experimenting with the capabilities to share and sell courses for profit. Specifically, which system would house and store a course securely for students to access if their school decided to purchase the course. I am interested in this because we work with two companies at my school, eDynamic (based out of the United States) and Content Connections (based out of the Comox Valley) that create online courses for secondary students and sell them through licenses to schools who wish to offer quality content that they are not responsible for maintaining or building and I am unsure how they are able to do this as I have a limited technology background in this area. The research behind my interest in course design and development stems from a independent study I did through the MET program. I discovered many “best practices” in course design that have led me to refine my practices about creating quality online content and what/what does not make a great online course for particular target audiences. I have included some references on this topic below for further reading and to discover my motivations and interests in this area.
This year, I have taken on a new role as the curriculum support teacher for many small distance learning (DL) based programs around the province. In this new role, we are using Google Apps for Education (GAFE) as the main platform of communication. Although I have used google drive (and several apps) for my own personal use and small scale classroom use (google documents for collaboration), the large scale of tracking student learning plans, report cards and several other critical documents was new to me and is a steep learning curve. We are also aiming to implement ‘Fresh Grade’ which I have no experience with.
Below, I have outlined the three areas I would like to further explore over the duration of this course and spend time experimenting with the functionality for the context in which I teach.

Moodle
The slogan for Moodle is “community driven, globally supported” and I like the idea that Moodle houses one of the largest open sourced teams in the world. However, I have hesitations about the Moodle platform has peers have told me that it is not “user-friendly” and is “difficult for teacher developers to work with.” As I would like to work with Moodle to discover how to create online course content, I will begin by working within Moodle’s Sandbox as this does not require download to check out the features.

From there, I would like to discover how Moodle needs to be ‘housed’ on a server and if you can use Moodle as a secure platform for online courses to be purchased and to gain access through license fees. Part of this learning curve is understanding how Moodle integrates with other popular LMS platforms as a course is of no use to a school if they cannot integrate it into their existing platform. Much of this is beyond my knowledge base and I will be looking to others in course and the instructor for guidance around this.

Google Apps for Education
I am familiar with the mail and google documents, spreadsheets and the sharing capability within these. I would like to learn about Google Forms (to conduct student and parent surveys), Google Expeditions, Google Classroom and Google Sites. I am unsure about the interface of Google Classroom and Sites as a replacement for an LMS and am curious as to how others have used these platforms and the ease of use for teachers and students.

An Image from Google Expedition, ”https://www.google.com/edu/expeditions/#about” 
An image from Google Classroom,  “https://www.google.com/edu/products/productivity-tools/” 
An image from Google Sites,  “https://apps.google.com/products/sites/index.html” 

Fresh Grade
Fresh Grade seems to offer options for sharing grading information that connects the dots for parents, students and teachers. The program I am working in allows parents to act as the home facilitator for their children and Fresh Grade seems to allow you to capture work through photographs on your everyday devices, such as an Iphone or Android phone, through their app. Fresh Grade said you can capture learning moments in real time through video, pictures, audio or notes and can share with individuals, groups or the entire class. The technology seems like a more realistic, engaging and meaningful way of reporting for parents, students and teachers but I need to spend time looking into how it is set up, how it transfers to the systems that are already in place for K-12 reporting (MyEd BC) and whether it is useful and easy to use for all involved. If it is difficult to implement, start-up or use, it will likely fall of the radar after the first few months of school with the busy lifestyles parents, students and teachers lead. Fresh Grade seems to offer a solution to 21st century grading and I am interested to explore this further.
Fresh Grade is endorsed by Education spokesperson and critic, Sir Ken Robinson,  “https://www.freshgrade.com/” https://www.freshgrade.com/

References

Dabbagh and Kitsantas (2011). Personal Learning Environments, social media, and self-regulated learning: A natural formula for connecting formal and informal learning Retreived April 15th, 2016 from http://anitacrawley.net/Articles/DabbaughPLE.pdf

Dixson (2012). Creating effective student engagement in online courses: What do students find engaging?

Grant, M., & Thornton, H. R. (2007). Best Practices in Undergraduate Adult Centered Online Learning: Mechanisms for Course Design and Delivery. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 3(4). Retrieved March 15, 2016, from http://jolt.merlot.org/documents/grant.pdf

Horn, M. B., & Staker, H. (2014). Blended: Using disruptive innovation to improve schools. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand.

Lister, M. (2014). Trends in the Design of E-Learning and Online Learning. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 10(4). Retrieved September 16th, 2016, from http://jolt.merlot.org/vol10no4/Lister_1214.pdf

**Images in my original post were retrieved from Moodle.org, Freshgrade.com and GAFE at https://www.google.com/edu/products/productivity-tools/ but my computer was having numerous issues with inserting images into the blog.

 

The World of Weblogs!

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Hello Everyone,

For those of you who missed my introduction in the course discussion, I am Britt Hanson, a blended and online learning teacher in the Comox Valley!

I am really into the content of this course as I often work with LMS platforms through course design and development.

I must admit, I have attempted some personal weblogs and have never found the process meaningful or engaging enough to stick with it – maybe it was never the right now. Nonetheless, I am here to share my insights into course material with you and learn from each of you throughout this process!

Britt 🙂