Weekly Schedule

1. Log In: If you don’t see “Howdy” and your name above, use the links and authorizations in the email you received to log into this course blog so that you’re able to contribute.
2. Get Oriented: Click around enough to understand the basic navigational principles.
3. Get on Board: Review all of the Instructions (selected from Category in the search bar) sufficiently to understand confidently what the course is about, what to expect, and what is expected of you. Please pay special attention to the Assignments and Participation Guidelines within the Instructions.  Your success in 523 will depend on a full understanding of these materials.
4. Create a Profile: Use the WordPress menu bar to enter the Dashboard, and from there edit your public profile (click “Users” and “Your Profile”), inserting an image and any other information you wish to provide. Remember that this is a public blog, so you’re welcome to create a pseudonym and non-identifying image if you wish. However, as you are now officially a co-author of this course, and the materials you create here should be suitable for linking to a CV and/or eportfolio, you should consider presenting a real professional persona. In particular, whatever you decide, please do not change your name during the course as this might fragment your presence.
5. Post Your Introduction:  Use the +New selection in the WordPress menu bar to author your first post. Make it an introduction about you, your background, your status in MET, and any initial thoughts you wish to share about education, mobile education in particular, and your objectives in taking this course. Add images, video or whatever conveys your introduction best. Be sure to set a Featured Image. Also be sure to select the “Authors” category when you publish this post so that it ends up in the right place.
6. Welcome Your Peers: During the week, drop in on Authors a few times to check out introductions from your peers. Don’t hesitate to Reply to some of these Posts to welcome someone you know, or comment on a shared interest, etc.
7. Prime Your Imagination:  Consider the overview thoughts in the Week 1: Mobility Perspectives section (the first of the Content posts) and then add your thoughts to at least one of the W01 Discussions (the first of the Discussion posts).
8. Complete the Frontiers Poll:  Follow the instructions for the Frontiers Poll (next section of this post) of leading mobility ideas. This must be done by Sunday of our first week in order for your opinions to shape the course.

The posts in the Frontiers Poll category are a set of statements describing some current frontiers of Mobility as derived from global thought-leaders & research sources. There are two purposes to the Frontiers Poll activity:

• Introduce you to some of the leading ideas and vocabulary you will be encountering within the course; and
• To obtain your immediate professional response to these ideas as a means of shaping the content of the course.

Many students have participated in scoping these frontiers.  If something seems missing you’ll have an opportunity to expand our frontiers further.

Instructions:

1. DO THE POLL: Carefully review all of the posts in this category in order to identify the eight (8) frontiers you believe are the most compelling (credible, important, exciting, inevitable, transformative) with respect to your professional perspectives on the global future of teaching and learning. Also identify the eight (8) emerging technologies you believe are the least compelling of these posts. Use the 5-star rating system (please reread the Ratings Guidelines in the Participation Guidelines if necessary) to rate your eight (8) most compelling frontiers as well as the eight (8) least compelling. {N.B.: Here, and throughout the course, we are relying on your most objective, professional opinion, not what you ‘like’ or ‘dislike’. For example, few educators ‘like’ the idea of “Robot Teachers”, but few would also dismiss that robots will earn a role in education. In this course it is very important for you to work with what you expect to happen as well as what you might wish to happen.}
2. IS SOMETHING MISSING?: (Optional) Have me missed something obvious, or are you a more visionary futurist than any of these studies? If you have a clear idea about a compelling mobility frontier that isn’t listed, please post it in roughly the same format as the other listings, hopefully with research source(s), and making sure it is categorized “Frontiers Poll” so that everyone else is able to vote on it. Each new post effectively gives you one extra vote (you can’t vote on your own post, but its existence is nonetheless a vote!). Do not post more than two (2) alternate selections without first discussing it with your instructor.
3. REVIEW THE BEST THREE: Identify the three (3) Frontiers from the full list that you believe are most compelling for you professionally in your career, either because their impact is most imminent (possibly negatively so) due to factors in your professional environment, or because you personally are deeply interested in them and intend to champion their application. For each of these three (3) posts use the “Leave a Reply” comment field to compose a short review (reread the Review Guidelines in the Participation Guidelines if necessary) about why you believe this frontier is so important. And yes, if you posted an alternate frontier in 2 (above), you could also review your own prediction.

N.B.1 – Depending on your screen settings, there may be several pages of posts in the Frontiers Poll, so don’t miss any!

N.B.2 – Polling Impact: The meshed results of this poll will help determine which frontiers will become the focus of the Movable Feast section of this course, and which team (to conduct Assignment #2) you will be assigned to. Nominally speaking the highest-rated posts will become our eight (8) feast topics, and you will be assigned to one of your three personal selections, but it almost certainly won’t come out exactly this way. If you have a high priority reason for being assigned to any specific topic, please email your instructor before the end of Week 1.

Deadline

This activity must be complete by the end of Week 1 to have any useful effect. Movable Feast topics and teams will be announced at the beginning of Week 2.

W02 involves completing the activities described in the “Week 2: Mobile Technology Review” post in the Content substream.  Further instructions will be announced at the end of W01.

• Complete Week 2 content curation activities.
• Contribute to Week 2 Discussions.
• Teams will be assigned to Movable Feast (A2) projects at the very beginning of W02
• Teams should convene to scope out their Movable Feast (A2) projects
• Individuals should start thinking about their Analytical Publishing Project (A1)

W03 involves completing the activities described in the “Week 03: Mobile Culture Review” post. Further instructions will be announced at the end of W02.

• Complete Week 3 content curation activities.
• Contribute to Week 3 Discussions.
• Teams are underway with their Movable Feast (A2) projects
• Individuals are underway with their Analytical Publishing Project (A1)

W04 involves completing the activities described in the “Week 04: Mobile Education Review” post.  Further instructions will be announced at the end of W03.

• Complete Week 4 content curation activities.
• Contribute to Week 4 Discussions.
• Teams are well underway with their Movable Feast (A2) projects
• Individuals are well underway with their Analytical Publishing Project (A1)

W05-W12 are our “Movable Feast” – special topics in mobile education produced, delivered and published by small teams of 523 peers. More detailed instructions for each of W05-W12 will be posted by student teams at the end of the previous weeks.

• Participate in all Movable Feast team presentations
• Movable Feast (A2) team project – due in your assigned week – post in Knowledge Mill
• Analytical Publishing Project (A1) – due at the end of W06 – post in Knowledge Mill
• Choose a topic for the Individual Authoring Project (A3) and begin your research
• Forecasting Project (A3) – due at the end of W12 – post in Knowledge Mill

W13 is a collective review of cohort A3 postings in the Mobile Forum. Further instructions will be announced near the end of W12.

• Participate in the Mobile Forum (Instructions in the next section of this post).
• Participation Portfolio (A4) – due at the end of W13 – email to instructor
• Contribute to Week 13 Discussions
• All done – bravo!

The objective of the Mobile Forum is to provide you an opportunity to apply the ideas and acumen you’ve acquired in ETEC523.  The collected Forecasts (A3 submissions) represent a peer-sourced vision for the future of mobile learning. Your role is to provide individual critical analysis toward a collective understanding of the most exciting and important of these emerging frontiers of mobile education.

First, post your A3 using the “(A3) Mobile Forum” category and whichever of the Mobile Education, Mobile Culture and Mobile Technology categories is most appropriate..  The W12-end Sunday deadline is absolutely essential so that Mobile Forum review assignments for W13 can be made.

Here’s how it will work:

1. Via email, early on the first day of Week 13, you will be assigned a random set of ten (10) forecasts to rate and/or review. The random distribution will ensure that each forecast is considered by many different evaluators and against a variety of comparative backgrounds.  You may rate and/or review more than ten, but make sure you complete all of those assigned.
2. Ratings: Critically analyse all ten forecasts and rate each one in terms of our ratings guidelines (remember that these ratings are anonymous, so you can be fully objective).
3. Reviews:  Select three (3) of your ten forecasts which you feel are the most valuable to you as a professional educator, and most insightful and important for the broadest audience of your peers (professional educators everywhere).  Provide a detailed critical review (no more than 300 words total) for each one.   Remember that these reviews are of your peers, and are not anonymous, but you must be as objective and professional as possible.
4. Recommendations:  Later in the last week, return to each of your ten assigned forecasts and consider the reviews that have accumulated for each one.  Use the Recommendation tool as per our Participation Guidelines to Recommend any reviews that you consider are especially valuable, or that deserve a negative recommendation.
5. Complete all of your responses before the final day of class. Your input, together with those of your peers, will provide valuable feedback to all of the authors and future readers.