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.