Final Synthesis and Reflection
Looking back on my Flight Plan
The early 21st century has seen an unprecedented growth in mobile learning technologies. (Hafeez-Baig & Danaher, 2007). If I am to remain an effective mathematics teacher, I will have to add some of these new technologies to my strong pedagogical background. My students are very interested and involved in technology, Facebook, Twitter, and of course cell phones. Since mobile telephone ownership and usage are now almost ubiquitous among student communities, (Uden, 2007) I need to add some additional tools to my teaching toolkit. Enrolling in the MET program marked the start of this acquisition process. What better way to learn new skills than to become immersed into a learning community, populated with experts of all levels. As part of the ETEC 565 experience, I hope to integrate three new technologies into my teaching and day-to-day experience.
Moodle, Prezi, and i-Phone are the new technologies that I wanted to become more familiar with. With some prior experience with moodle, I really liked what I saw, both as a teacher and as a student. It seemed to fit into my teaching style. Prezi is a cloud application that I had seen, but had never developed. It is so dynamic and fun. My hope is that Prezi could add some “justo” to my lessons, both in the instruction and the review components. I really want to upgrade my cell phone to an i-Phone, or some other type of smart phone. The affordances a smart phone has to offer seemed too good to be without. I have made substantive gains in the use of both Moodle and Prezi as part of the over-all learning toolkit of ETEC 565. To date I have not purchased an i-Phone, I have not had the time to do the research necessary to make an informed decision.
The eLearning Toolkit
In a course entitled Learning Technologies: Selection, Design and Application, one would hope that technologies would form the backbone of study? I have found the eLearning toolkit anchored to this course to be very useful. Two components, the LMS’s, provided the overall structure for the course. The Vista platform upon which the course is delivered is easy to use, flexible, and full of components that allow a huge degree of flexibility and design. Offering both synchronous and asynchronous communication opportunities, Vista is a comfortable companion for those of us who are engaged in the MET program, yet is intuitive enough to allow new learners to join the learning community with relative ease. The Moodle platform, takes on the form of an exoskeleton, an LMS outside of Vista, within which a vast majority of our learning, design and application took place.
I have mixed feelings about another toolkit component, the wiki. Its use in a group project was very different that my previous wiki use, where I edited a pre-existing wiki page. In the group project, while concurrent editing was possible, most of the work was of an asynchronous nature. While that parallels the LMS’s used, the wiki did not offer a linear or sequential format. Every time I went to edit the wiki, I had to go through the entire document to determine what had been added/edited. This turned out to be very time consuming and not in alignment with my concrete-sequential nature. What I did enjoy is how the “wiki experts” in our group were able to initiate a structure to the project that allowed the rest of us to engage with.
The most familiar item in the toolkit was the Weblog, the WordPress e-portfolio. A common component of many ETEC courses I feel very comfortable using the weblog, and seem to add new components with each new course. This growth, with extended use, makes me feel confident that I will be able to meet the requirements of ETEC 590, the final component of my UBC Master’s Program.
With LMS platforms, wikis, and weblogs being the major players in the eLearning toolkit, another technological software, in my case, Prezi, played a substantial part. I had identified Prezi as being a “cloud” application that I wished to pursue in my flight plan. As the course progressed, its use was put on the back burner until I started to explore some other cloud applications during our 50 ways to tell a story assignment. While a few other possibilities, like Animoto, Picasa and Pixton will need to be explored at a later date, Prezi seemed to fit the needs of several objectives. As it turned out I became so absorbed in building the story of our trip to Egypt, I bypassed the educational objectives of the assignment. I can live with that, because like most experiences with new technology, there is much to be learned with the doing, actually building the Prezi. I can clearly state that my next project dealing with Moodle, or WordPress or Prezi will be considerably better for my having had the opportunity to interact with them in the last three months.
Along with the economic gains that a Master’s degree will provide, one of the major reasons to enroll in MET was to gain some hands-on experience with technology, especially educational technology. A course dedicated to learning technologies should offer numerous opportunities to become exposed to new toys. Wimba, both voice and audio offer communication opportunities to be further explored. Our Moodle podcast(s) left me with the need to be able to broadcast in that fashion, and with an online instructor as a member of our class, I spent some time looking into Illuminate, the learning platform that her company uses. Even our group project, where we used the group conversation component if Skype, while synchronously working on and editing our Google Doc document allowed for some essential hands on skill and exposure to additional technologies.
The ETEC 565A Experience
I would have been extremely disappointed if I had not taken ETEC 565A. The work I was asked to do, the technologies I was asked to try, evaluate, and critique, is exactly what I had hoped the entire MET program to be like. I do understand that a graduate program requires a substantial degree of rigour, tons of reading, and buckets full of research, but the direct contact with the various technologies is what I was looking for, what I need. As the course concludes I feel enabled to move forward, using some of the technology presented in ETEC 565A, or any of the other educational technologies that I have yet to encounter.
I enjoyed the way the course was designed. Content, expectations and evaluation schemes were well communicated. The Wimba audio introduction was unique, and the instructor seemed to be trying new things throughout the course, much like we, as students, were being asked to do. This concept as “do as I do” was mirrored in the time release of the five learning modules, something we were required to do in our Moodle assignment. I was given an opportunity to improve components of my work, at no penalty. I really appreciate being able to fix little things, with the overall goal of making the entire package better. I do wonder, why, in a digital course, are we not asked or required to take advantages of the affordances of video in creating new works, or being involved in the discussion forums.
Discussion forums continue to initiate the most change in my educational paradigm. I always liked to do my own work, and often shied away from group work because of the reliance on others to do their part. Because of this experience in my personal education, I have not initiated lots of group work in my own teaching practice or curriculum design. MET has changed that. Every MET course makes extensive use of the discussion forum to build learning communities. These communities are populated by individuals that posses vast amounts of knowledge, knowledge they are very eager to share. So much learning takes place in these forums. In ETEC 565A, my participation in the learning community allowed me to ask direct question about Moodle problems, forced me to clarify my stance on several educational issues, and reinforced ideas and approaches that I use in my classroom. My classmates asked course questions that I needed answers to, and usually someone provided the answers as well. In this course, more than in others, there seemed to be more technical problems that needed to be addressed. The discussion forum, as a learning community, offered essential knowledge that we all seemed to require.
I enjoyed the content of ETEC 565A more than any of the other eight MET courses I have completed thus far. Our instructor seemed to have a great sense of when to appear, and when to monitor activity from his vantage point. As I now look back, two addition course components need to be articulated. Firstly, in several instances we were asked to discuss or comment on what Trihn or Lenora or Dafna should do, based on rather sparse information. I thought this exercise created an excellent opportunity to engage in problem solving surrounding educational technology. It forced me to consider the extent of my emerging skills, and again created excellent dialogue in the discussion forum. Secondly, I have finally seen how evaluation using a rubric is such a powerful and efficient tool. In our district we have dedicated professional development days to rubric writing, but I have never grasped the entire picture. Having my digital story graded by highlighting the appropriate boxes in the evaluation rubric was a powerful experience. While I may not use a rubric for every component of my course, I feel confident that I can now at least develop a rubric that will have a positive impact on evaluation.
Moving Forward
There is nothing as motivating as becoming completely emerged in something new and exciting. Despite the chronic lack of sleep, ETEC 565A has created that immersive environment for me. I have driven my wife crazy with my constant talk, demonstration, and enthusiasm with the many technologies used in this course, and the countless web-based applications we looked at in ETEC 533. I guess the challenge will be to continue to move forward, perhaps at a more reasonable pace.
First on my list is to purchase an i-phone. With a month until my next courses start I now have the time to look into phones and plans, and make an informed decision. I truly believe that mobile learning holds a great many opportunities for the very near future. I feel the need to be more connected, to have the affordances of the Net always close at hand. My daughter says we can have video phone calls together. With a built-in GPS, maybe I won’t get lost in Vancouver next time I am down there officiating basketball.
Next on my list is a Smart board. It is being installed in my classroom this Tuesday, and already my principal is making arrangement for some basic in-service for myself and the science teacher. Another teacher already has a year’s experience with his Smart board, so we are looking to create a learning community within our building. I am not totally sure what the Smart board can do for me and my students, but I intend to find out. If nothing else I will be able to load class notes onto my website, a feature my students are all looking forward to.
Since the start of my MET, I have been trying to inject more and more technologies into my mathematics curriculum. My grade11’s use Google docs for many activities, review opportunities, and out of class communications. Most access our doc using their smart phones. We have started to make a collection of worthwhile and effect YouTube videos that can be use in class either to introduce new topics, or for review. There are lots of instructional videos; it is interesting to see how the students evaluate which are good and which are not. There is a movement in our district to finally have wifi in our schools. That will open up an entirely new realm of educational opportunities, some that I look forward to, some that will create new problems and issues. Already my administrator is seeking my opinions on issues regarding technology. While not an expert by far, MET has armed me with a new netiquette tools that must be applied to the implementation and design of new educational technologies. I must also step up and become a voice regarding the pros, but especially the potential downfalls regarding social media and other digital communications.
If I have learned anything in this and other MET courses is that the implementation of new technology, even if it is intended only for personal use, takes time, involves a reasonable amount of frustration, and generally requires generous amounts of in-service and help. While I now posses some initial experience with Moodle, Wiki, Weblogs, and Prezi, I am hoping to gain some experience with Illuminate in the coming twelve months. It is the online platform used by my school district in its limited role with online courses, and it use also used my several institutes that offer online courses, both here in Canada and abroad. Hopefully a Master’s Degree from UBC, along with a smattering of experience with several LMS’s will allow me to get out of the classroom, and extend my teaching career as an online educator. The current political climate in British Columbia makes me want to hasten the pace of such a transition.
References:
Hafeez-Baig, A., & Danaher, P., (2007). Future Possibilities for Mobile Learning Technologies and Applications at the University of Southern Queensland. MoLTA.
Uden, L., (2007). Activity theory for designing mobile learning. Int. J. Mobile Learning and Organization, 1(1)