Author Archives: Laurie Campbell

Final Synthesis

 

At the beginning of this course in my “flight plan,” I outlined my hopes for this course as it fits in with district initiatives and my personal career goals.  I hope to transition into administration within the next couple of years, and district-level decisions with regards to technology are being made all the time with the help of current administrators.  Specifically, I looked at the Google Classroom leadership training I was already involved with and hoped that this course would help clear my own pedagogical thinking with regards to initiatives like this.  It has.

In my “flight path,” I liked the quote, “Teachers or educational administrators making decisions about educational technology should have some theoretical model or framework that guides the choice of media and technology. If not, they will be constantly driven by the latest technology development, whether or not they are appropriate” (Bates & Poole, 2003).  This course supplied a few valuable tools for evaluation of technology to be used in teaching and learning.

Early in the course, we looked at two frameworks for evaluation, including Bates’ SECTIONS model (Bates, 2014).  It was useful to discuss this model with my group during Assignment 2 as we designed the LMS evaluation rubric.  I revisited this framework twice more in the course as I evaluated Prezi.com for my digital story, and Google Classroom for my Content Module reflection, but the principles examined in Chickering & Ehrmann were thought-provoking as well.  “Good Practice Uses Active Learning Techniques” and “Good Practice Respects Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning” (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996) are two guidelines for good practice across all aspects of teaching but are especially good to keep in mind as technology becomes more and more prevalent in the classroom.

As we moved into Module 2, it was interesting to make connections between Lenora and her website quandaries, and the “on the ground” situation in Eliza Archie Memorial School.  As a hopeful administrator, I thought about what I would tell someone working for me in this situation.  Would I put pressure on someone to adopt a technological solution that was perhaps out of their comfort zone?  Possibly, but I would like to think that during my discussion of Lenora’s situation, I also presented a good argument for balancing home- and work-life.  Teachers have a tough time with this one, and technology is supposed to be the servant, not the master.

For a few years, I have been a little nervous watching the US educational emphasis on standardized testing.  Fortunately, it would seem that the Calgary Catholic School District and the Canadian education system in general are leaning away from this emphasis.  In Week 7, I really enjoyed reading about assessment and learning.  I wrote about how that in their introduction, Gibbs and Simpson point out that “The most reliable, rigorous and cheat-proof assessment systems are often accompanied by dull and lifeless learning that has short lasting outcomes – indeed they often directly lead to such learning” (Gibbs & Simpson, 2005).   They go on to point out that “A review of 150 studies of the relationship between exam results and a wide range of adult achievement found the relationship to be, at best, slight” (Baird, 1985 as quoted in Gibbs & Simpson, 2005).  Students who spend the majority of their learning time preparing for exams come away with little to show in terms of deep learning.  Technology seems to lend itself so well to project-based learning, where students can be assessed for their deep learning of a topic or skill set.  I really enjoyed see how other teachers are incorporating project-based learning and assessment.  Mike Hengeveld’s STEM Solar Tracker project was inspirational.

In Week 9, I learned a little more about myself in terms of where I stand on mobile devices in the classroom.  Up until this point, I would have been automatically in favour of students brining their own devices to school.  When I had a chance to think about it, however, I realized that for one student in my room who does bring her phone to school on a regular basis, it has not been a positive for her.  She has been isolated at recess because she would rather play on her phone then play with her friends, and for a Grade 4 student, that socialization time is vital.  Am I still in favour of BYOD (bring-your-own-device) in general?  Yes, but perhaps only for more structured learning activities inside the classroom, and perhaps for older students.

As I developed my own online course for students learning about expository writing, I had an opportunity to re-examine something I’ve taught for several years.  Google Classroom has much to offer during a blended course.  I can see this being a fantastic way for myself as a teacher to provide more timely feedback, for students to access materials and to collaborate online with their peers.

At the beginning of the course, I was wondering specifically about Google Classroom, the leadership training I was involved with at the district level, and how this course would help with my pedagogical thinking as I worked more with this tool and was expected to recommend it for use by other teachers.  I am more confident with the choices I am making using technology in my teaching in general, but more specifically with Google Classroom because of the material discussed in this class and the hands-on practice I’ve done.  I look forward to using this pedagogy as I implement technology in the future, perhaps in a leadership role.

 

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/9-pedagogical-differences-between-media/

Bates, A. W., & Poole, G. (2003). Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. Jossey-Bass, An Imprint of Wiley. 10475 Crosspoint Blvd, Indianapolis, IN 46256.

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 from http://www.aahea.org/articles/sevenprinciples.htm

Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf

Google Classroom, Expository Writing and Mitra’s ‘Hole in the Wall’

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.

Introductory Module Reflection

For my assignment, I am designing a course in Google Classrooms that can be used with Grade 4 students to teach expository writing.  This is my reflection on the process so far.

Alberta Grade 4 Language Arts Curriculum shifts the attention of student writing from narrative writing to expository writing.  General Outcome 3 states that “Students will listen, speak, read, write, view and represent to manage ideas and information.”  These are the most relevant curriculum outcomes:

3.1:  Focus Attention

  • use organizational patterns of expository texts to understand ideas and information
  • develop and follow a class plan for accessing and gathering ideas and information

3.2: Use a variety of sources

  • locate information to answer research questions, using a variety of sources, such as maps, atlases, charts, dictionaries, school libraries, video programs, elders in the community and field trips

3.3:  Organize information

  • organize ideas and information, using appropriate categories, chronological order, cause and effect, or posing and answering questions
  • record ideas and information that are on topic
  • organize oral, print and other media texts into sections that relate to and develop the topic

Record information

  • make notes of key words, phrases and images by subtopics; cite titles and authors of sources alphabetically
  • paraphrase information from oral, print and other media sources

 

Google Classrooms is a district-wide initiative this year that all teachers are being encouraged to utilize.  For me, it was important to take some of the material I was already covering at the Grade 4 level, and leverage Google Classrooms to make the material a little more student-centred.  As I start with this introductory module, I can see that formative assessment especially should be easier to accomplish using Google Classroom as opposed to what I was doing in a traditional delivery.  For example, I have included a simple online Google Form as a quiz to see what they already know about expository writing and how well-able they are to write an expository paragraph.  This is probably not something I would have “slammed” them with so early on without the capabilities of Google Classroom.

Assessment in general will be a little different using Google Classrooms, and I think this is a good thing.  Gibbs and Simpson (2005) quoted a 1985 paper that found “A review of 150 studies of the relationship between exam results and a wide range of adult achievement found the relationship to be, at best, slight” (Baird, 1985).  Gibbs and Simpson also go on to discuss the importance of course work as opposed to summative tests for long term learning.  So, do teachers need to mark everything that a student works on as part of a course?  “It is argued that you have to assess everything that moves in order to capture students’ time an energy” (Gibbs & Simpson, 2005).  Not necessarily so!  There are other ways to generate student engagement, including peer- and self-assessment.  I am still playing around with the idea of how students could do a little self-assessment as a video to upload, or how they could use online apps to sort the information they’re pulling from multiple sources.

Tony Bates in 2014 noted that “The form of assessment should also be influenced by the knowledge and skills that students need in a digital age, which means focusing as much on assessing skills as knowledge of content.  Thus continuous or formative assessment will be as important as summative or ‘end-of-course’ assessment” (Bates, 2014).  I think this Google Classroom course will have an appropriate focus on the skills students need for gathering and presenting information.  In the past, I have debated whether to allow students to pick their own topic for study.  It would be so easy to tell everyone that they were supposed to write about Alberta settlers, just to help ‘get through’ the Social Studies content.  By shifting the focus to a needed skill set, I think there is a much higher level of student engagement.

Many introductory modules (and course syllabi at the university level for decades) have had a detailed percentage break-down of summative assessment grading.  At the elementary level, there has been long, deep discussion of the types of grades students receive.  We are currently using only EX, AB, AC and NY (excellence, above average, acceptable and ‘not yet’), with no percentage descriptors.  Students receive feedback and individual discussion of their progress, but no percentage grade.  I felt it was useful to explain the difference between formative and summative assessment in a Grade-4-friendly way, but there is no table showing that some assignments are worth more than others.  I think there is value in leading them through the process of writing and presenting an expository piece without picking out one part of the process as more important than another.

References:

Alberta Education Programs of Study (2000).  English Language Arts K-9.  Retrieved from: http://www.learnalberta.ca/ProgramOfStudy.aspx?lang=en&ProgramId=404703#635484

Baird, L. L. (1985). Do grades and tests predict adult accomplishment?. Research in Higher Education, 23(1), 3-85.

Bates. T. (2014). Teaching in a digital age. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/chapter/5-8-assessment-of-learning/

Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf

Assignment 2 Reflection

In completing this assignment, I was able to think a little more critically about some of the decisions that seem “automatic” in my job every day.  I teach Grade 4 for the Calgary Catholic School District, and we are currently in the process of implementing Google Classroom.  We have used the Google suite of tools (Docs, Slides, Sheets, etc.) for a while, but when I asked about Classroom, I was told that “the district is going in a different direction.”  This year, Google Classroom is what we’re using as a district and I haven’t seen a lot of reasoning behind the decision.  Granted, I’m not in a role where I would be privy to that decision-making process, but often we receive an explanation of the rationale behind these decisions.

The SECTIONS model seems quite relevant to upper elementary.  Student access and ease of use issues are paramount.  Students need almost immediate feedback from their teachers and benefit tremendously from a constructivist-style collaborative process with their peers.  Technical support and networking infrastructure issues are something that our district struggles with on a regular basis.  Schools seem to be “testing the waters” to see how these technologies fit with provincial FOIP laws around student privacy.

I enjoyed the chance to grapple with some of these issues in a hypothetical scenario, because it was interesting to see how they would apply to the Calgary Catholic School District.

I also lucked out with my group assignment.  Lisa, Mike, Amanda and Jamie are fantastic to work with.

Our group rubric assignment:

LMS Rubric BC Group

Laurie Campbell – Flight Path

Back in high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do when I “grew up”.  There were so many options.  How did anyone pick just one thing?  I took an interest inventory that told me I should be an optometrist.  I went off to the University of Calgary and registered for everything that would allow me to apply to the Optometry program at Waterloo.  I loved the biology, enjoyed the chemistry, made it through the calculus, and realized part-way through my first year that I had no idea what an optometrist did all day.  I didn’t even wear glasses!  I talked an optometrist into letting me shadow him for an afternoon.  It was mind-numbingly boring, until an older gentleman came in complaining of “blind spots” in his vision.  The optometrist diagnosed macular degeneration, and said there was very little to be done.  I no longer wanted to be an optometrist. Continue reading →