As Hannibal Smith of 1980s A-Team notoriety says "I love it when a plan comes together". That has definitely been the case with the completion of ETEC 565. I came into the course with a minor tech-addiction, a proficiency in a number of media, and an active user of media in the classroom. However, as I noted in my flight plan; a concrete understand leads to better delivery. So question remained. What new material could I learn? Was there any sound theory behind my logic for trying certain approaches with lesson design and media? What aspects did I need to reconsider about lesson design and execution in regards to media to best create a positive and effective learning environment for the students?
Also missing from my bag of tricks was a solid foundation in assessment of media and assessment of student work using media. I aimed to have the underpinnings for selecting media for my classroom and in terms of my role as the head of the technology committee; responsible for helping to develop the path our school and my fellow teachers take in regards to using and implementing technology. Since we already have a server setup, but not in use, for Moodle at school, one of the major goals was to become familiar with this LMS and course design and facilitation. Thus allowing me to broaden the depth of learning we could offer to students at Fraser Academy.
After several months now of course work, readings, discussions, and explorations of the e-tool kit, along with the development of a Moodle facilitated course I feel like I have achieved many of my goals and at least built a solid start for further developing online learning tools and using media. While it is still an area in need of development, I have also begun to better understand reasons and implications for assessment of students. Gibbs & Simpsons’ 2005, Conditions Under Which Assessment Supports’ Learning was very helpful and provide support to ideas that I already have in place and push me to consider the delivery and execution of future tasks. I also found articles by Bates & Poole (2003) on the SECTIONS model and Chickering & Erhmann’s (1996), ideas for implementing the seven principles very useful. Other take a ways from the readings include the ideas using gaming in learning and drawing upon tools for students to mash-up and create works of their own from resources, which already exist, but then assess their ability to synthesize new ideas from old content.As I explored the e-toolkit, I found that I was already familiar with many of the tools (I have a photoblog on WordPress, manipulate image as a photographer, and more than a few times I’ve had students create podcasts). The exercises in themselves were informative as one examined the advantages and disadvantages a media had for conveying a message and developing interaction between the learner and the content. I spent the most time in the e-toolkit exploring web-design, and Moodle. It was the most interesting and frustrating endeavor. The basics of layout and organization were no problem once I decided, which unit I was going to focus on and what type of activities I wanted to include. I found creating format and natural flow through the modules more challenging as I played with several different ideas and orientations. I elected to purchase one of the Adobe creative suites to have Dream Weaver (also, Photoshop upgrade, Flash for animations, and Acrobat for annotating and creating PDFs). My rudimentary skills with HTML were quickly maxed out and a steep and arduous learning curve happened as I battled format and style. Through readings, exploring templates, trial & error, and consultation with both colleagues and friends I built up an understanding of webpage design. It was interesting experimenting with CSS and once the rules were understood, it has the potential to allow the designer to very quickly change details. I was lucky enough to have extra practice working with Moodle and web-design, as my group for ETEC-511 opted to develop another course on Moodle and I volunteered to do most of the web-design.
For ETEC 565 I elected to develop a blended model for the Evolution unit in Biology 11. I know that all of my students have access to both computers and the internet at home, and that a serve is already setup to host Moodle at School. So, I will actually be using the course this fall. Difficulties when designing included the pacing and deciding what components I’d expand upon in the classroom and which areas would be left to the students to discover, explore, and return to discuss. I choose a weekly format layout in order to give my students a sense of time and also to see how long it would actually take to complete. As I have not attempted this before it will provide guidelines for revisions in the future. Where I expect difficulties to arise is in assessment and content development. I still feel that while I have moved onto the web, the content and design is still too linear and intended for the traditional face-to-face classroom (f2f). Part of this has to do with being unsure how students will handle some of the more complex and compound ideas found in the content and part is from my own biases and familiarity with the f2f approach.
I found Moodle limiting in terms of creating auto-assessments, which were as flexible as I’d be as teacher marking assignments. For some of the assessments, students need to craft an answer in a specific manner, or else it would be marked incorrect and I found that this meant I worded questions in particular ways, which I would not normally do. The ability for students to receive instant and constructive feedback though was a great feature and ties in well with Gibbs & Simpson’s approach to assessment. My thoughts are perhaps the difficulties reflect the need to adjust not only what I am assessing but also how I am assessing students understanding and mastery of a concept.
Future developments and follow-up will happen in the immediate future with my continued adventure through six more MET courses, which I expect will yield opportunities to use the ideas here to frame future tasks. Using my Evolution course in the fall will mean that I continue to develop and revise it, as well as, to add modules for other courses. As head of the technology committee at work I am responsible for choosing software and developing programs and teacher training, which means I will have real world experience in applying the SECTIONS model and discussing the options and implications with my administrative team, and fellow teachers. Being that one of the challenges I faced this term was taking a second MET course, and still working full-time meant that there was very little time to actually take and implement the ideas covered in either course in my regular teaching practices. The inclusion of ideas and models talked about in ETEC 565 will also be part of my feature learning and development goals. I am also pretty psyched on using of mobile, smart technologies to facilitate learning in the classroom.
As a whole, ETEC 565 has been a very useful and informative course. All the activities provided direct links to considerations for selecting, using, assessing, and delivering media. Though there were instances were I several of the written discussions seemed to be redundant in the task components. Reading other members blogs on their thoughts about learning was interesting and our broad group of students with different backgrounds and styles offered up both similar and novel approaches to tasks and discussion topics. These insights allowed me to gain a better understanding of media as per my flight plan goals. The differing ideas and approaches also provided useful feedback for reframing and reconsidering not only the execution of the course tasks, but also those, which I already use or would like to use in the future.
Reference:
Bates A. W. & Poole, G. (2003). A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In A.W. Bates & G. Poole, Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education (75-108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 4.
Chickering, A.W. & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996). Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6.
Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1, 3-31.