A final ePortfolio synthesis reflection, posted in the Synthesis page including a:

1-2 paragraph précis of your flight path;

2015-2016 is my eleventh year teaching. I have worked in both middle school and high school grades as well as some teaching in K-2. I have used technology consistently in my classroom for six years. The last six years were a mix of grade levels and subjects, but roughly (except this current school year as I am teaching Grade 2) I was teaching Social Studies to the two earliest years of middle school (ages 11-13). In my Social Studies classroom about 25% of what happened in the classroom was in a digital learning environment. The most common technology used in my classroom was blogs (especially for reflections), an LMS (as a repository for resources and a place for online chat/ collaboration/a venue for peer evaluation and feedback) and various web 2.0 tools/ websites. My goals in ETEC 565a are to gain knowledge and skills in the LMS Blackboard Learn, refine my understanding of setting up a Moodle course and gather tools to judge effectively and choose appropriate technologies for different learning situations.

I have experience with course design and teaching in Moodle, Google Classroom, and Edmodo. I have moved away from Moodle in the last three years. One reason that I stopped using Moodle was that it was easier to use Google Classrooms to reach my course goals. Whether looking at Moodle or Google Classroom, I have had few issues when dealing with multimedia; most LMS systems are user-friendly for the course designer. I sometimes consider becoming more proficient in LMS course design in case I want to leave face-to-face K-12 teaching and work solely in online learning. There could be several scenarios where this would be advantageous.  Since I live abroad and work on contracts, I could potentially have the freedom to live in more places if teaching online. Secondly, I could teach online when/ if I move back to Canada solely or as I seek a face-to-face teaching job. There are three resources that I think I will need to master the technologies in this course: time, examples and a troubleshooting system (whether that is self-directed such as a Google search or Youtube video or a more formal system, potentially even reaching out to my past mentors). Time is finite in the course but my time management will be important. I hope to allow myself the time to explore and tinker in course design/ LMS course building. Examples are equally helpful as well as detrimental.

Substantive, comprehensive and detailed reflection about your overall ETEC 565A experience

My overall experience in ETEC 565A will be described in 6 sections. I will comment on the course based on each of the four assignments that I completed, as well as my 565A ePortfolio and lastly, a catch-all section for thoughts that don’t fit specifically to the assignments or my ePortfolio.

Assignment #1 – Online Delivery Platform Evaluation Rubric.

I enjoyed working with my group to create this rubric. It was also considerate that the group assignment was early in the course. Otherwise, group assignments can be onerous when nearing the end of the course when everyone is busy working individually on final assignments. This makes it much more difficult to work in a synchronous way especially depending where group participants are located globally. To see my reflection from after Assignment #1, please click here.

Assignment #2 – LMS Introductory Module

I began ETEC 565A with prior Moodle experience. However, what I hadn’t anticipated was the difference between when I had constructed Moodle courses for my classes and what it would be like to construct a Moodle course (or part thereof) as an assignment. There were two major differences between these two constructions: a blended versus a fully online environment and an authentic audience vs. a potential future audience. As noted in my week 13 video discussion, I had not realized, before ETEC 565a, the volumes of work that go into the course design of a 100% online course. When I received my grade and feedback after handing in Assignment #2, I was equally pleased and frustrated. The grade reflected the work that I had done, but I was frustrated because when I read the feedback many of the omissions or areas that needed attention where things that I was capable of doing but had overlooked. Of course, hindsight is when we see the error of our ways, but I had wished that I could go back and clean up some areas that I hadn’t.

I also struggled at times to create a course for students I hadn’t met.  I suppose that this is ‘business as usual’ for online instructors, but I am a face-to-face teacher,. Except at the beginning of the school year, I am usually armed with the knowledge of who my students are, how they learn best and what activities/ assessment/ environment is going to suit them best. Not that I tailor everything I make to their particular needs as there are other areas to focus on such as curriculum indicators to cover or what works best for a particular activity, but I have some data and experience to work with.

Assignment #3 – Content Module & Digital Story

I was engaged and focussed while I put my Content Module and Digital Story together. This focus was born out of many areas – good organization and direction I utilised and drew from the course requirements, pre-constructed course goals I specified by having already designed the assessment during the Introductory Module and lastly, my prior knowledge of using most parts of Moodle.

I struggled with a few requirements. The small group forum and the banner/ icons as title were both areas that I had to seek help with. I am pleased with the overall flow of the activities within the content module. I think that I have balanced the variety of activities, students have some choice as to how they complete their assignments, and the activities allow students to inquire.

Again, my biggest hurdle was to design a course that could be used but was not going to be used with any students that I currently know. During decisions that I made, there was no threshold or limit that stopped my work but also no ideal or expected overall experience that I was trying to achieve. Besides, of course, trying to stay firm to all that I know from my teaching practice and experience, connections to learning theories such as constructivism and best practice pedagogical standards.

My digital story – My digital story reflection is contained here.

Assignment #4 – Final Synthesis

Having arrived at the end of the course which coincides with the end of my Master’s work in the MET program, I am elated to have made it to this point. I was working on ETEC 590 simultaneously as ETEC 565a, and I think that both of these courses though demanding, are a great finish line for my program. Writing this synthesis has allowed me to look back over the last thirteen weeks and comprehensively analysis what was covered, what I did and the concepts/ ideas that were encountered.

565A ePortfolio

Since posting my Flight path on January 17th, I have made an effort to post all work including discussions/ case study discussions, reflections and assignments to my 565a ePortfolio. I like to post to my ePortfolio at the same time as I post to our New Learning Space blog as this gave me a sense of accomplishment to see my ePortfolio grow as the course progressed. Not to mention that it has also created a great space to showcase all of the work that I completed in the course.

I wish that every course within my MET program had allowed me/ prompted me to create an ePortfolio, or I had taken the initiative from early on. All of my coursework is contained in organised folders in my Google Drive. If I wanted, I could flip this into blogs or another type of ePortfolio. I suppose that by completing ETEC 590, I have done this in a critical and reflective but not comprehensive way.

Other experiences

As Natasha had indicated early in the course, ETEC 565a is an intensive course that asks a lot from its participants. I agree with her! The other experience that I should reflect on is taking part in the weekly case study discussions and discussions. To complete the assigned readings and prepare a substantive response, I learned early on to schedule enough time for this process every week. Google calendar was my best friend to be able to do this. The one area in this process that I wish I had had more time is in reading and responding to my classmate’s posts. By mid way through the course, I was struggling to participate as much as I would have liked to but my time was being taken up by working on assignments and especially in my LMS Moodle course.

Substantive, comprehensive and detailed reflection about next steps for you, in terms of your practice in educational technology, which could include what technologies you hope to explore moving forward, or how you plan on engaging as a lifelong learner in terms of educational technology;

1.Next steps in educational technology- Technology I hope to explore more moving forward

Regarding LMS, I am still interested to see more planning and design in Connect albeit I say that in consideration of the attitude promoted by Porto (2015) who foresees the downfall of traditional LMS due to social media and the popularity of MOOCs. At this point in my career, the use of proprietary LMS systems does not extend beyond Moodle and mainly focuses on those attached to my places of employment. Regarding the K-12 system, many schools take advantage of the suite of apps offered by Google Education.

My interest in Connect is more from a personal stand point. In the same way that I love to explore new Web 2.0 tools, I also like to discover the inner set-up and configuration of LMS systems used in post-secondary institutions.

2. Next steps in educational technology- My plans as a life long learner, in terms of ed tech

I think for the time being I will remain, at most, a blended learning teacher. ETEC 565a has made clear to me the investment of time and thought that online instructors put into their course design. Which doesn’t mean that I will never teach a fully online course in the future, but I am more realistically able to judge what that might look like now.

References

Bates, T. (2014). Teaching in a digital age, Chapter 8. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/

Everhart, N., & Harris, F. J. (2002). Using Primary Sources and Creative Writing to Teach Middle School History. Knowledge Quest, 31(2), 52-54.

Hodges, G. C. (06/01/2013). Changing english: Reading within families: Taking a historical perspective University of London, Institute of Education. doi:10.1080/1358684X.2013.788292

Lin, Y., Lin, Y., & Huang, Y. (2011). Development of a diagnostic system using a testing-based approach for strengthening student prior knowledge. Computers & Education, 57(2), 1557-1570. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.03.004

McNamee, S. and Moscheta, M. (2015), Relational Intelligence and Collaborative Learning. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2015: 25–40. doi: 10.1002/tl.20134

Nel, C., Dreyer, C., & Carstens, W. A. M. (2010). Educational technologies: A classification and evaluation. Tydskrif vir letterkunde, 35(4), 238-258. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ajol.info/index.php/tvl/article/download/53794/42346

Porto, S. (2015). The uncertain future of Learning Management Systems. The Evolllution: Illuminating the Lifelong Learning Movement. Retrieved from http://www.evolllution.com/opinions/uncertain-future-learning-management-systems/

Sumerian School Days [Text and Object]. (2016). Children and Youth in History. Retrieved 10 March 2016, from https://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/408

My digital story intends to provoke students in a two-fold way. I hope that students will be able to perspective take, an important part of being an historian. Secondly, I hope that my students will see how even though children of Mesopotamia lived thousands of years before them that they are similarities (and differences) between those ancient youths and themselves. I hope that they can appreciate that the more we see history as less foreign and far away from ourselves the easier it is to understand what life may have been like at that time. Hodges (2013) emphasizes the importance of historical perspective for children of this age group (12 -13-year-olds). She states that a historical perspective helps students to consolidate the information that they are taking in. Further, she states “bringing historical contexts into clearer focus can help individuals see the way they are positioned in relation to those contexts and also see that those positions, like the course of a river, may be constantly shifting” (p. 185).

With these objectives in mind, I set about creating a short story in Videoscribe. The video has three parts – the story, some provoking questions and then ‘the twist’.  I hope that students will ask themselves many questions throughout the video. Even if the questions which they come up with are simply trying to figure out how the story fits into what they are studying or why this story is presented with this unit. It is a purposefully simple and vague story which is revealed as being a ‘true’ story recorded on a cuneiform clay tablet from Mesopotamia. But without this information being given at the beginning, the setting of the story could easily be anywhere at anytime.

I think that Videoscribe works well for the telling of this story. I was able to utilize the animation functions of the video creator, and both images and text are made more interesting with the transitions and visual effects. Videoscribe allowed me to set-up the story in such a way that I could tell the story without a specific setting while still making the plot obvious to the potential student audience. In this way, I was also able to take a primary source and transform it, through narrative into something that students would be more familiar with, by momentarily stripping the historical context and then putting in back in during the surprise twist at the end.

This story is created to begin the content module. It is trying to draw students ‘nearer’ to the history – having the students relate to the character in the story before telling them that it is a young Mesopotamian boy intends to make the content of the module seem less distant from their modern lives. Everhart and Harris (2002) speak of the strength of using primary sources and creative writing successfully in a middle school history classroom. Furthermore in their research, they note the trend of students to connect their historical understanding to their lives, when they state “the students tended to interpret the artifacts from the vantage point of their personal experiences and contemporary time frame” (p.53).  

Overall, my experience creating my digital story as a starting point for my content module was highly successful. As I described on Connect in my video reflection, I had initially planned to use a website called Interlude Treehouse. I abandoned this website after trying to engage in video production for three days but realizing that learning to use the video creation tool was too cumbersome and time-consuming when I could instead go back to using something I was more familiar with.

References

Everhart, N., & Harris, F. J. (2002). Using Primary Sources and Creative Writing to Teach Middle School History. Knowledge Quest, 31(2), 52-54.

Hodges, G. C. (06/01/2013). Changing english: Reading within families: Taking a historical perspective University of London, Institute of Education. doi:10.1080/1358684X.2013.788292

Sumerian School Days [Text and Object]. (2016). Children and Youth in History. Retrieved 10 March 2016, from https://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/408

Reflecting on my experience in creating my Grade 6 Ancient River Civilizations Moodle Course, I know that I relied on my previous experience in Moodle, struggled to create the HTML pages and ultimately, feel that the course I have developed is something that I could ‘pick up’ and bring into my current teaching practice.
One section of the Moodle course that I am most proud of is my Introductory activity. This activity is a collaborative and interactive Google map. Mc Namee and Moscheta (2015) support the use of a collaborative introductory activity such as this.
Students get a chance to introduce themselves and begin the discussion on ancient rivers. First by recounting their prior knowledge of a river that they have been to (and in the event that they had never been to a river, a phenomenon that I have discovered among some groups of students while teaching abroad, they can describe a river that they would like to go to. Lin, Lin and Huang discuss the importance of strengthening student’s prior knowledge before commencing the unit of study in their article Development of a diagnostic system using a testing-based approach for strengthening student prior knowledge. (2011)
Originally, I had planned to complete a similar introductory activity in Google Drawings. Students would have contributed a personal textbox to a photo of a river. I am glad that I revised this activity to include some basic mapping skills, and I think that student participants would also enjoy how this activity allows them to get a glimpse of rivers worldwide.

Communication with my students

There are five communication channels that I have created and addressed in my Moodle course pages. The first area for students to see is the Important Information HTML page which clearly states different communication methods, where they are located and what type of communication issues that they address.
I have utilized and created two discussion forums. Though the New Forum is automatically created in the Moodle course, I will use this forum for the teacher to give reminders and whole class feedback and advice. The second is the Course Materials Forum, which will address student queries about access to and understanding of the course materials. This forum will also hopefully be beneficial since if one student has a query about a specific resource, once I clarify the issue then all students will have access to the answers to these replies.
In the event of student illness, emergencies and asking for extensions with the final assessments, I have an email which is specific to these circumstances.
Lastly, there is an email address given to tech support and Moodle issues.

Assessment strategies

This Moodle course uses Option 2 for assessment – there is a shorter quiz in addition to a comparison poster assignment. The strategy for the first assessment is for the student to show their comprehension and familiarity with the Knowledge Bank materials before proceeding onto Assessment 2.
Assessment two asks students to find six artifacts from the two different river civilizations and curate them in a Comparison Poster. Students are given a template poster that they will populate with the required information of the assessment. I have used this assessment before successfully in a blended classroom environment so was interested to see how it would accompany a fully online version of the unit.
Students have access to the two rubrics that they will be assessed with. The rubrics utilize MYP (Middle Years Programme) Humanities/ Individuals and Societies criteria. These rubrics had been created for the previous blended course and I have altered them to be suitable in this fully online course.

References

Lin, Y., Lin, Y., & Huang, Y. (2011). Development of a diagnostic system using a testing-based approach for strengthening student prior knowledge. Computers & Education, 57(2), 1557-1570. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2011.03.004
McNamee, S. and Moscheta, M. (2015), Relational Intelligence and Collaborative Learning. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2015: 25–40. doi: 10.1002/tl.20134