Denise Flick – Learning and Teaching

August 5th, 2011 – 4:28 pm

“Technology in and of itself may not guarantee better learning. But when effectively deployed, technology can help focus attention while attracting and maintaining a learner’s interest.” – Ellen Wagner 2005

Realistically, I have time to post a quality blog on one more of the etoolkit sessions. I have chosen to reflect upon the MLearning toolkit. The schools in our district are all wireless and our persons of power are encouraging students to bring personal devices to school for learning purposes. The teachers in our district  . . . . most  . . . not yet.

I have chosen to take the Etoolkit challenge. Using my iphone  I have been able to access both the ETEC 565 WebCT Vista course site and my own Moodle course without difficulty. I have also created a new message in one of the discussion forums. Not without difficulty. Although the load times and page rendering were without great challenge (smaller fingers would help), had I not already been so familiar with tool location, tool access would have been very challenging.

Previously the only apps I had on my iphone were those downloaded for me by my children. (I just got the iphone last month and have been a bit busy with a certain course and have not had time to play.) So . . . the apps that I possess are those that a ten and thirteen year old feel would be of great value. (I will admit that I lost a number of hours to Angry Birds and am now on level 4.) I googled “apps for moodle” and actually ended up with “apps for noodle”. I read that I could open my Moodle site in my web browser but it was not recommended. I can configure my Moodle to be Mobile-accessible. (Don’t think that people are really that interested.

I have used my iphone to capture photos (very good quality). I have taken a video (quite by accident). In a pinch I might again use my iphone or  for certain activities in a learning situation but I would certainly never choose one of those devices over my trusty, adult sized, large screened,  Mac.

There are challenges that must be overcome before all students will be able to engage in learning on their smartphones, ipads, DSi’s PSP’s, notebooks, etc. Some but not all of those challenges include battery life, screen size, key size, streaming capabilities, security, and multiple operating systems, (“Mlearning” ). These challenges and others will be overcome. The face of education inside and outside of the school walls will change.

BTW – My daughter just logged into our course site and had no difficulty navigating to my last post. I asked her to create a post in which she answered the following questions:

What is your name?

Would you use this device to navigate the web at school?

Do you already sometimes use a personal device to access the web at school?

Would you rather use a laptop?

How old are you?

How many minutes did it take you to complete these questions?

OMG! It was instinctive. It was easy. Google Search – log on – site navigation and question answering took less than five minutes. It was an example of the capabilities of the now generation. My daughter begins high school in September. She is attending one of two schools in the district that is encourages students to bring laptops and is providing ipads for some students in an effort to learn how mobile devices might facilitate learning. Sorry, Hannah we did not buy you an ipad but we did buy you a notebook. Surprise!

Mlearning. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.vista.ubc.ca/webct/urw/lc5620672300211.tp5620672329211/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct

Wagner, E. (2005). Enabling mobile learning. Educause Review, 40(3),

I have created many a webpage during the past two years. Some I have created for assignments and some for educational purposes. In all cases, the creation of the website took much longer than anticipated. Time passed quickly while involved in the creative endeavor.

Creating a web page is a “creative” endeavor. We seldom say “making” a web page, “compiling” a web page or “constructing” a web page. Truth be told though, many of my webpages do appear to be constructed rather than created. In the early years of my children’s lives I tried to create attractive and alluring scrapbook pages chronicling their development and experiences. I was usually disappointed with the product as I am still most often disappointed with the webpage products that I create now. Both have improved but lack the “wow” factor of many other examples that I see in others scrapbooks or online. The creation is always labour intensive and the effort and time applied does not always match the educational benefit.

What did work well was examining other webpages created by talented and artistic webpage designers. I was able to incorporate pleasing examples of their product and improve the presentation, layout, and educational impact of my own. It is challenging to incorporate “space and layout, handle fonts and colors, and put it all together in a format that puts your message across” (Kyrnin, 2011). It is then helpful but shocking to Wave your own creations. What I thought to be an attractive and informative webpage was evaluated to have fourteen accessibility errors (the most I could find on an ETEC webpage was one). As a student I remember studying how to create an attractive title page or poster. Today in schools we need to facilitate the development of these same important skills as applied to online web pages.

I am surprised that using different internet browsers could create such differences in the creation and/or viewing of webpages. This really came to light during the culminating Moodle assignment. Some browsers are more creation friendly and others viewer friendly.

I am thrilled that my skill set in creating webpages has been developed by this course. To be honest though, only three of my five courses to date have involved such creations. In my first course I worked with a young teacher to create a Moodle for the delivery of an numeracy unit on integers. He created the Moodle and I provided most of  the educational (pedagogical and content) knowledge. The same course required that I construct a Wiki. I did it! What a satisfying learning activity.  In my third course a group assignment involved creating a series of web pages to deliver one of the modules to our cohort. Due to my Wiki experience, I was actually considered the expert and I designed the majority of the website. There was this course. Believe it or not, two of my five courses have involved only essay writing.

There are many work situations in which I could create webpages to deliver information and/or learning activities. It is important that before investing much time and energy in products that I consider whether or not the effort is worth the value. My learning in any content area deepens when I create a web based product to accompany it. Maybe thats really the secret. The goal is not my being able to create phenomenal web pages the goal is my being able to facilitate others to deepen their understanding and skills in content areas by helping them create the webpages. After all the student should always work harder than the teacher. Right?

Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987).  Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.  American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), 3-7.

http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm

Kyrnin, J. (2011). Web design basics. Retrieved from https://www.vista.ubc.ca/webct/urw/lc5116011.tp0/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct

The first assignment in which I “created” a power point presentation, although not a “pure” example of digital story telling was my first foray into the world of digital media as a resource to impart information. In 2007 during my Masters in Curriculum and Administration, we were asked to create a project that would communicate our thoughts on leadership. I chose to compare the leadership styles of  Star Trek individuals in command from Captain Kirk thru to Captain Janeway. I remember spending days – hours, creating that powerpoint. I could not wait for the time availability to work on the project and had great difficulty ceasing work and calling the project “done”. With the help of one of my grade six students I was able to add audio and video. I was empowered and proud.

For some of my MET courses I have been asked to create assignments using various media tools. I have experienced the same engagement and creative satisfaction that I experienced in 2007. Wonderful! This is what I want for my grade school students and for my teacher candidates.

There are those of us who love to write. I am one of those (given a topic for which I have knowledge and passion). As we experience in our classrooms, there are those of us who do not love to write. In years past those were the students who struggled through our classes and struggled through school. Now . . . the times have changed. No longer do students need to use the written word to demonstrate their learning and their creativity. Now, students can use all manner of tools to communicate.

As public education strives to provide individualized, differentiated, inquiry and project based facilitated learning and representations of learning, digital story telling and the multitude of tools which can be employed to accomplish the task are the engaging and transformative tools that will help us marry the learner of today and the world of today.

The Times They are a Changing

Should you choose to click the link above, you will connect to my digital story offering. My digital story hopefully will have the reader/viewer/listener consider education and the reformation that may very well be close at hand.

I chose to use VUVOX, a tool with which I could create an interactive slideshow presentation. Having previously created wikis, websites, e-portfolios  . . . I found the tool user friendly. I chose this tool because it was far down on the list of tools linked to Alan Levine’s webpage . . . and I hoped that my choice might be unique amongst the cohort. The tool very much influenced the manner in which I told this story. I had to be succinct (a trait that is not common to my written work) and I had to let the images chosen facilitate the connections that I hoped the “participant” would make.

A few tips for viewing –

•read the opening frame before engaging the screeen

•click on the arrow under the images and the presentation will flow and music will accompany

•you can easily forward or backward the presentation to catch something missed by moving your cursor over the slides

•click on the video icons to be taken to (in this case), a Sir Ken video

I will likely use this tool to create an introduction to myself for my next class of teacher candidates and post it to the course moodle. I will ask that the students create a similar introduction for my benefit and the benefit of the cohort. I hope that for my students, the opportunity to create and share their stories will have a similar effect on them as was had on me. I was anxious to use the tool to engage and please my cohort. I loved the creative possibilities of the tool and was determined to use multi media to communicate.

I certainly did not advantage all possibilities of VUVOX. My work was not as polished as would be possible with more time applied. But  . . . the result is pleasing and more importantly the learning that occurred and the possibilities that are now peculating in my mind made the hours of exploration worthwhile.

Alan Levine.  (2007). “50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story.”  Accessed 17 March 2011. http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools

RSA Animate, (n.d.). Changing Education Paradigms[Web]. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

Last week my Educational Technology cohort was asked to share responses and reflections in a format other than our accustomed “Discussion Forum”. The format requested was that of a wiki.

The wiki provided some challenges. The challenges were both technical as well as practical. Any social media vehicle can experience technical difficulties so we will not hold those against the wiki. But, as a forum for discussion . . . the wiki was not up to the task. A wiki is meant as a vehicle by which people might collaborate on a ever improving product not as a platform for shared opinions.

Not having a photographic memory, I had to scan the “contents” each time I logged in to discover whether or not other cohort members had added their thoughts. Then I often had to scan the wiki in its entirety to read the latest contributions. A discussion forum really is a better place to hold a discussion.

When asked to collaborate and choose five strategies and five challenges when facilitating social media in the classroom, I was immobilized.  I read the suggestions listed – thought “Sure, they look good.” and then thought who am I to edit what is already there. I might edit facts for correctness or supplement with more information but I was very hesitant to edit suggestions from others in my cohort.

Wikis? I love them. They are creative outlets in which writers can indulge their passions and interests and in which the collective can create a product better than that which the individual can create alone. But  . . . as a forum for discussion and response. No thanks.

This week in my Masters of Educational Technology course (ETEC 565), we were introduced to Boris. Boris is at teacher of Chemistry 11. He is technologically competent and is using Moodle to “disseminate lecture notes, lab forms and to answer student questions outside of class time”.

Each year, Boris finds that approximately half of his students are unable to memorize the periodic table. Boris would like to create a stand alone review tool to help students learn the table. As a cohort, we have been asked to respond to Boris’ dilemma and I presume to suggest appropriate ways for Boris to meet his objectives.

Good news, Boris! No where in the learning outcomes for Chemistry 11 are students required to memorize the periodic table. What is asked is the following –

E4 draw conclusions about the similarities and trends in the properties of elements, with reference to the periodic table

Provide your student with a paper or electronic copy of the periodic table and use your assessment review tool for other purposes.