ETEC 565 and the Journey to the Sun
When I began this course, I came to it with some experience, since I use Moodle in my teaching practice and also develop and design websites for companies. In some ways I felt as if I had already constructed my wings, like Icarus, and was ready to journey to the Sun, yet what I discovered along the way were insights that were unexpected.
Flight Path
My passion for the Digital Media arts has driven my teaching practice and learning throughout the last 20 years, but have culminated in a new Digital Media Arts program I constructed at my school based on research and techniques learned in MET. I thrive on change and feel at home in the digital space of flows of the Internet. What I seek in my teaching and learning is a creative space in which the inner artist can thrive, share learning through a community of practice, build educational artifacts in project and social-based learning opportunities, and organize self-directed and blended learning models through crowdsourced resources and social media interactions. This is built into my teaching practice where the main goal is not the transmission of skills in the digital media arts, but rather critical literacy and media creation, which Buckingham (2007) describes as the development of skills for self-expression which enabling a more reflective use and understanding of media. This hearkens to social and constructivist theories of Vygotsky (Tu, Blocher & Roberts 2008) and Bruner (Lewis, Pea & Rosen 2010) which describe the transformation of learning through the building of tools or artifacts to provide a material basis for consciousness. This is the basis of my digital media arts program and professional experience in graphic design, website design and marketing.
My experience in building the Moodle LMS course site has been enlightening. While I have used Moodle for close to ten years, I wanted to push the software to see if I could create a completely new style of online course based on the idea of building an interface similar to a website, complete with icons and introductory paragraphs leading to read more buttons.
The overall theme for the course was using Social Media for Business and Personal Branding. This was completely new topic for me, even though I had taught small components of the idea in my Digital Media Arts 11&12 classes, I wanted to produce something completely unique. The course is suited to the needs of business people and online entrepreneurs and those who want to learn more about how to use Social media to promote themselves, their products and/or their services. I worked far harder and longer than I anticipated to build this site, creating a great deal of original artwork, content and researching topics deeply to gain a better understanding of the most important concepts around business and social media.
This digital story is about a “Creative”, or a digital media artist, in the future, named Jezebel. Since I only had a minute to work with, I had to rely on imagery, colour, archetypes, a minimized story line and the thematic power of metaphor
The story takes place in the future, where the network society has taken hold and the world’s cities are divided into districts of knowledge production. Our protagonist, Jezebel, is a Creative who has burned out and is unable to access her creativity to produce knowledge for the Internet, and this terrifies her. In order to get past the wall of despair the artist lives in without creative space, she plugs her mind into the Internet, which at this point in the future, has truly become a physical manifestation of the collective unconscious. Therein, she digs into her memory spaces for visions of nature, beauty, colour, and flow of ideas. This journey is symbolized in the story by entering a digital portal, travelling through data and ending up on a beach. Her relief is then displayed by the symbolism of water – a huge archetype across all cultures of the human family – and the magic of the creative vision is her ability to walk on it. As her journey ends in the path through the woods, or the journey back to consciousness, her mind is alive with abstract thought and colour, making her internal computer chips buzz with the electricity of creation.
Assessment Strategies for Social Media for Business unit
Building the assessment into my online course about social media for business and personal branding was a challenging and creative assignment. I wanted to create possibilities for factual recall, personal opinions and critical thinking about the unit on how to implement a social media strategy, so I implemented a variety of testing strategies such as multiple choice questions about the general information, matching for factual recall, and short answer and essay questions for critical thinking and personal insights and opinions.
This was a challenge, since I had to do the research and build the unit first, complete with lessons and activities. Yet the creative aspect of this is that while I was writing up the content and setting up the activities, I was able to anticipate questions and put in spaces for critical thought development as well as making the unit applicable to a learner’s needs. My assessment strategies include a social media forum to discuss the necessity of social media in business, a quiz on the content of social media strategy, a formal submission of a social media strategy for a personal business, and a workshop/peer assessment to review the social media strategy proposal before submission. Creating the quiz was challenging, as it forced me to work deeply inside the tools of Moodle to create varying styles of questions, feedback and time limits.
Moodle Server for Digital Media Arts Program
Kenneth Buis
ETEC 565, June 2011
Introduction
I developed a Digital Media Arts program to provide adult students, many of whom are recent immigrants, with opportunities to participate as digital citizens within the global networked society. The main goals of the program include the provision of a stable learning platform upon which to build the digital literacy skills required for 21st century workplace and learning, as well as the integration of social media and web 2.0 tools. According to Tu and Bloche(2008), these tools enhance mediated knowledge creation, provide for information sharing opportunities in personalized environments for collaboration and content creation. The Digital Media Arts program goes beyond the traditional goals of skill transfer based on media arts production. Rather, it is designed to the develop skills and provide opportunities for self-expression and a more reflective use and understanding of media, or critical literacy and media creation as described by Buckingham(2007).
Read more…
The Digital Media Arts have long been a passion and have extended deeply within my teaching practice and corporate adventures. I thrive on change and have journeyed deep into the digital space of flows to experiment with learning and updating my skills in the timeless time of cyberspace. Along this flow of inspiration and innovation I have implemented a great deal of new technology, and continually teach new content in adaptation to changes in world technology. While maintaining this stream of creative adaptation takes a great deal of energy, I am committed to providing opportunities for learners to adapt to the new global networked society, to update their abilities, embrace their inner artist and understand the implications of Informationalism.
I recently moved to a new school that has not had computer classes for years and am building a Digital Media Arts program. My classes are filled with students of all educational backgrounds (including engineers, artists, business people) aged 17-75 from every corner of the world. In order to provide flexibility learning opportunities to accommodate their outside responsibilities, all classes are taught in a blended mode, with course content based in Moodle. During each class, I offer professional skill-building workshops, each prescheduled on our online program calendar. Social media is integrated throughout the program with the use of Twitter, Tumblr, and a class blog. Every element of the course is project-based, with opportunities for self-direction and adaptation to real world product creation. For example, we build websites for non-profit organizations and develop print graphics, marketing plans, social media strategy, and SEO optimization.
S – Students: What is known about the students – or potential students – and the appropriateness of the technology for this particular group or range of students?
E – Ease of use and reliability: how easy is it for both teachers and students to use? How reliable and well tested is the technology?
C – Costs: what is the cost structure of each technology? What is the unit cost per learner?
T – Teaching and learning: what kinds of learning are needed? What instructional approaches will best meet these needs? What are the best technologies for supporting this teaching and learning?
I – Interactivity: what kind of interaction does this technology enable?
O – Organizational issues: What are the organizational requirements and the barriers to be removed before this technology can be used successfully? What changes in organization need to be made?
N – Novelty: how new is this technology?
S – Speed: how quickly can courses be mounted with this technology? How quickly can materials be changed? (Bates and Poole, 2003)
For the last 17 years I have taught, developed and adapted technology to computer courses. I have also been a technology coordinator for much of that time as well. As a result I have had to consider the implications of choosing technology carefully over the years while also being able to adapt to shrinking school board budgets and the politics of Dromology.
The two must striking elements of the Bates and Poole model that I have faced over the years have to be Costs and Organizational issues.
Costs are always an issue when it comes to implementing new technology. Governments develop curriculum requirements and suggested tools and strategies, and then, at least in the public system, they systematically strip away funding. Programs that suffer the most seem to be the arts, music and technology, since they are the hardest to standardize and often the most difficult to quantify. Being able to keep labs of computers up-to-date as well as providing software that fits the requirements course work and prepares students well for their future endeavours is key to my teaching practices. Another aspect around cost is the fact that decision makers no very little about technology and implementing new educational directions, and are often unwilling to learn, and make their financial decisions based on dated knowledge of education and technology.
This ties in directly with Organizational issues. If a school system is to provide innovative teaching and learning opportunities for students and teachers, it needs to be properly organized to implement funding for technology that solves the issues and needs at hand, instead of political issues. For example, in the Vancouver School Board, Desire to Learn was implemented at a great cost, rather than using Moodle. The Adult Ed. Section was not allowed to use it, so we developed Moodle for free instead and it has had a greater, lasting effect on the delivery of course material and mixed-mode learning than could have been possible with Desire to Learn. This is one of many examples of the troubles of bureaucracy. The new model in business is to involve all elements of an organization in the decision-making process, and to open up opportunities for all levels.
Another aspect of Organizational Issues is Dromology and the politics of CHANGE. Innovative use of technology can be politically charged as teachers work either together or individually to implement change and deliver a different educational product via new technology. Norway, for example, has required that all students attain a high level of technological ability before they graduate. Schools have begun moving towards a model of a learning organization, where teachers and students learn new technology and adapt to it continually. Bureaucracy and organizational issues are definitely a problem regarding Dromology, the politics of change and implementing new technology.
If you are interested in Dromology, please see: http://www.ferviddesigns.com/kenbuis/dromology-and-ocularcentrism/
Bates & Poole. (2003). “A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology.” In Effective Teaching with Technology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
I teach digital media arts and work tirelessly to inspire student creativity by building in artistic inspiration at all levels of the course, while also exploring the creative process and working with creative flow. To prevent a Fordist approach to producing digital works, whether they be digital art, websites, animations or video, my students work individually and in groups or as a class to work through an inspiration and give it life through gradual and complementary development. We study the paintings of the Masters through the ages to learn about colour and light, study and explore photography, follow and learn from graphic design and website design trends and take time to truly appreciate digital media as an art form. Through our class blog we work together to share our experiences and development as digital media artists.
All of my courses are developed with a digital-age learning experience and assessment in mind. I have been using Moodle in my classes for 8+ years and implement it in a blended mode model of learning. Skill-building workshops are presented each class to develop various skills and artistry, and are posted on a calendar I designed in PHP. Assessment is based on a combination of real-world market value, originality and creative approaches, growth of technological skill and artistic insight and through the production of work based on real-world design issues. Further insight into work is given space on our class blog.
I model digital age work and learning, since I am also a website designer, graphic artist and photographer, SEO and internet marketing professional as well as a web-entrepreneur. Since I know how I have built and designed my own products, I share some of them with students for insight into the business and art of digital media, as well as experiences of working with a very diverse group of business people from all over the world. In order to teach blogging and digital citizenship I write up sample blogs on our class blog (some of which were published through larger organizations—exciting!) and assist students in developing their online digital voice. Hence they learn to not only consume, but also to produce knowledge. We use Twitter and Tumblr and learn to work within the confines of the fluid space of flows of cyberspace. The class also works very hard to maintain originality and respect the copyright of work online. I have done workshops, pro-d presentations and community training over the years and continue to do so. The entire focus of my work is to inspire and enable the inner artist in every student and teacher I work with, and my excitement at working with that interior artist is infectious. In my side businesses I teach social media, marketing, digital identity and branding as well as a model for just-in-time learning (which never ends, but is based on current needs of a project, client or business). Everything I teach is no older than 8 months, so it is completely current and still in the innovation mode. While this is challenging to keep up with, my students leave with a foundation of cutting-edge skills.
In ETEC 565 I would like to continue to develop my skills in building communities of practice, start looking more deeply into mobile learning solutions and experiment with solid online communication tools and educational crowdsourcing.
Every course I have taken in MET has enriched all aspects of my teaching practice, as well as my own personal insights and philosophies into the networked society, dromology and art. I look forward to the challenge and enlightenment of learning and utilizing more, guided by the rich insights and experiences of our class CoP. At some point, I would also like to begin working on a project that enables a global, integrated learning platform for secondary school, similar to our MET experience, but based on project production.