Assignment 4 Reflection
Laurie Campbell
ETEC 565A
April 1, 2018
Setting up my own online course was an… interesting… experience! There were things I hadn’t considered, that now make a lot of sense. In this reflection, I hope to show why I chose the tools I did, and the pedagogical decisions behind some of the technology and learning activities used.
As stated in my video reflection last week, Prezi was an effective choice for telling my digital story. Using Bates’ SECTIONS model (Bates, 2014), Prezi.com seems to offer a tool useful for presenting content, but also for student to use in their own presentations.
Students – Grade 4 students in general are fairly comfortable using technology but have limited capacity to follow instructions without making errors. Additionally, we have a number of English language learners who rely on visuals to make sense of unfamiliar vocabulary. Prezi is simple to use, and visually rich.
Ease of Use – Prezi is intuitive to use and work through at an individual learner’s pace.
Cost – It is free to set up educational accounts using Prezi. We already have Chromebooks available to use in the classroom so there is no additional budget required.
Teaching and Media Selection – The Alberta Education Language Arts curriculum outcomes around expository and narrative text were included. The use of a narrative story to present expository information will make for an interesting classroom discussion.
Interaction – Prezi invites students to “stay-and-play” with the material, providing a high level of interaction.
Organizational Issues – Lisa Falconi in our class pointed out that in her school board, Prezi.com is on the “red list” for privacy issues, prohibiting use by students. My Calgary Catholic School District does not seem to have this concern at the moment. It will be interesting to see if this is an issue in the future. We are fairly lucky to have a team of consultants in educational technology that help with implementation issues as well.
Networking: As this is a blended class with students using the technology in a classroom setting, there is plenty of opportunity for students to network and discuss the ideas presented.
Security and Privacy: As pointed out under Organizational Issues, student privacy may be a concern to some school boards. As this story was presented by a teacher, student privacy shouldn’t be an issue. If the students want to use the technology for their own presentation, this would be a little different.
I think if I was left to my own devices, I probably would have chosen the same technology to present the material in a slightly different way. Although the use of a narrative story to present expository information about expository texts will make for an interesting discussion, it may be a little confusing for 9-year olds during an introduction to the topic. I would have used Prezi, but dropped the narrative around “Morgan” having an amazing adventure.
Stepping back a bit and looking at the course I’ve designed as a whole, there are some pedagogical considerations that I would like to discuss. Looking at readings done more recently in the course, Bates’ discussion on MOOCs was interesting when contrasted with a blended course like the one I am planning. Could an online course on expository writing for children be accessible to any student (or parent) who wanted it? In section 5.4.3, it was concluded that “… MOOCs… cater to the better educated, older and employed sectors of society” (Bates, 2014). Grade 4 students need fairly frequent, personalized attention in order to master writing skills. They might be able to watch a video and pass an automatically-grade quiz in my Google Classroom, but as a teacher, I still need to see how they put their ideas together as they write a paragraph. Older students will be more successful in online courses.
That said, I am still interested in the TED Talk I saw a few years ago done by Sugata Mitra (2013). He took a computer and left it accessible to children in an urban slum in Delhi, India, moving to other locations later in the experiment. Independently, the children were able to figure out how to use the computers, even using English. The first child in the city of Shivpuri was a 13-year old boy who figured out how to browse the internet in 8 minutes. Three months after the computer was left in a village, Mitra returned and the students announced that they needed a faster processor and a better mouse and were able to use about 200 English words. After repetitions of the experiment, Mitra concluded that children aged 6-13 were able to self-instruct under just about any circumstance, so long as it was in groups.
Bryan Alexander envisions a time in 2024 when online universities “have at last achieved pedagogical prowess on a par with what face-to-face campuses offer,” but compares them to brick-and-mortar institutions that will synthesize “the best of face-to-face teaching with what the digital world has to offer” (Alexander, 2014). I wonder if they’ll both use Google Classroom?
My classroom is at:
classroom.google.com
Class code: rwtq1h
Possible issue: The CSSD has purchased access to Google Read&Write for all our students. The Golden Bricks activity due May 11 has been tested using a district machine, and students are indeed able to write on and hand in their completed .pdf. I’m a little worried that this might not work for others. Keep me posted!
References:
Alexander, B. (2014). Higher education in 2014: Glimpsing the future. Educause Review, 4(5) Retrieved from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2014/9/higher-education-in-2024-glimpsing-the-future
Bates, T. (2014). MOOCs. In Teaching in digital age, Chapter 7. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/chapter-7-moocs/
Bates, T. (2014). 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/
Mitra, Sugata (2013). Kids can teach themselves [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.