Category Archives: Online Course

Thoughts on Assignment 3

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Gapminder

Dr Hans Rosling demonstrates Gapminder World

I was looking forward to creating Unit 2 because I had already planned for it. The Backward Design model has been an refreshing way to re-think planning. I feel like I’m looking through the walls of a glass house to all the different rooms and spaces, rather than having to move through opaquely, not really understanding what is on the other side or whether or not the door will be locked. O.K. – I’ll stop with the metaphor, but leave it so say – Understanding by Design allows educators to see and plan for the big picture and the details at the same time. I outlined Unit 2 way back at the beginning of the course. Since it represents “getting into it” as far as the course content goes, I already had the roadmap and the motivation to design the details. Another motivating factor has been my intention to create a course that is ready to go in September. I feel like I’ve succeeded.

I know my patterns, and I fell into one of them right away: creating a mobile game and supporting video that is time-intensive. Our digital storytelling activity in class was serendipitous with the first two activities in my new unit, creating a mobile game based on a family geographic journey. ARIS is the game platform that I planned to use. I had a slew of new ideas that I wanted to try-out with it after the ARIS Summit in Madison in July and the Unit 2 game provided me that opportunity – or should I say, temptation. I have a history of going down the rabbit hole of concentration and focus at the expense of other commitments, and I did that again with this activity. Eventually, I knew that I had to carry-on with just an incomplete demo game and video that shows my intentions. I’ve just got to re-make the video with some more images and a voice-over so that it is operational. Continue reading →

Digital Storytelling with ARIS

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Your looking an my grandmother here (yep – she was a beauty!). This is the video overview of my digital story which I created on ARIS Games as an activity in my content unit for Assignment 3. I tend not to present things until they are complete and I feel good about them. This is definitely a beta concept video.

Stay-tuned for an update. I will be comparing this video and the game it is based on, with a new iteration. I will also document that process.

Updated Video

This is the second iteration and the one that will be the model on my Moodle site for Unit 2. This one is more of a trailer than a demo. It is designed to entice students in my Online Geography 12 course to investigate the game, the ARIS Games platform and the first stage of the geographic inquiry process – asking good geographic questions.

I’m going to write more, but this part of the project has taken me much longer than I budgeted. I’ll be back soon with a rationale and comments. Hope you enjoy it

It was an interesting exercise making a new orientation video for my game because in the process of creating it on iMovie and working on my Moodle content unit, I ended-up changing it for the better. Originally, the game was going to be a narrative that students would simply follow by touching ‘continue’. I realized that is wasn’t very ‘gamified’ for a game, and that the badges came across more as didactic reminders than as question prompts.

My new iteration – and the one reflected by this second ‘teaser’ video – requires players to key-in geographic question to keep the game moving. In other words: no question, no progress. I also created more mystery and incentive to finish by not disclosing who is speaking through the ring. In fact, I completely took by great-grandfather out of the game altogether, except for a picture. The way it operates now is that players are confronted with a pre-badge (my term). They get to collect the badge but it serves as a prompt to ask a question at that time. Their reward is the ability to continue.

As stand alone game with no context, people may ask why a player would choose to make the effort to construct geographic questions. I made it to function as the orientation stage in the Constructivist Instruction Model (CIM) by requiring them to script what they think is an appropriate question. The big deal here is the geographic inquiry all hinges on the creating of specifically geo-type questions. From there, the stages are: acquire information (data), explore, analyze and act. After playing the game, students author their own ARIS game based on their family migration story that asks improved questions. In between my game and their’s they have an online discussion and evaluate each other’s two best questions. The whole idea is that they get continual practice with the skill.

Last detail, there actually is a ring! My great-grandfather bought a ring at the end of the First World War with the money the City of Liverpool awarded him for being an officer in the home guard. The ring went from him, to my grandfather, and then to me. It was fun for me to create the game using my own family history.

Pre-planning for the Online Introductory Module

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June 16:

For the past few days I have been thinking an planning through the introductory module of the of my online Geography 12 course for next September. It will be useful to create it for a fully online course so that I gain that experience, and so that I can see how it can be adapted to a blended format. I’ve spent some time researching more about backward design by reading by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, and watching some of their excellent videos on Youtube (see below). It has been really helpful to hear them explain the design model and field questions from others.

My approach is going to be go back through my notes and reflections of my last attempts at teaching Geography 12 using what I thought at the time was a blended model (pre-MET days) and compare this information with papers I have written in 511, 500 and 512 where I focus on best practices for online PBL.

The introduction will focus on thinking geographically and using the tools of geography. Our school has a subscription to ArcOnline from ESRI Geographic Information Systems. My intention is to have students work collaboratively on project to create an interactive map and learn the functionalities of the tool in the process. The idea is to expose students to industry standard software as a way to situate them into the role of geographers, start to use the language of geography, differentiate between geographic thinking and other forms of investigation (possibly contrasting this with historical thinking), and starting to learn how to be effective team learners.

My timing goal is to have these early pre-planning stages worked out by the beginning of next week (starting June 22), have the rough draft reading for uploading to Moodle by the following weekend, then have the remainder of the week to revise and trouble-shoot. This hopefully factors -in my tendency for under-estimating the time I really need to complete assignments.

Ideally I would like to have been in a group for assignments 2 and 3 but I know that collaboration would be difficult with other commitments that have between now and July 5. I’m writing a proposal for the BC Social Studies PSA in October due on July 1st, which is also my 25th anniversary, and I’ve got to prepare a presentation for the ARIS Summit at the University of Wisconsin on July. Busy times.