Precis of Flight Path
My flight path outlined the context within which I teach, then outlined how my teaching experience motivated me to join the MET program. I was optimistic and exciting to learn new things to aid in the development of a more useful IT course for my students, or, at least, learn skills that I could adapt to fit my specific context. I outlined my wish to collaborate, in part to improve my confidence. After evaluating myself against the ISTE (2008) standards and Bates’ (2014) SECTIONS framework, I identified my course as being weak in interactions and feedback. I thought that I could learn more about LMSs to encourage more teacher-student and student-student interaction in my courses. I was concerned about my HTML skills and the challenge of using social media. I acknowledged that my goals were few, but attributed this to my inexperience in the MET program as I did not have a foundation to draw upon.
My ETEC 565A Experience
My overall experience during this course was challenging but positive. As I mentioned in my flight path, I was appreciative of Bates’ (2014) SECTIONS framework and the ISTE (2008) standards as they provided a structure for me to follow and to evaluate myself against. As expected, I discovered shortfalls in my methods—specifically in feedback and interaction. However, I had some strengths, especially in ease-of-use, which I leveraged to help make improvements in my weaker areas.
While my flight path specifically mentioned collaboration as one of my goals. I initially believed that social media would be where this happened, and I reluctantly returned to Twitter. November (2012) outlined how the use of hashtags can bring people together, and, for awhile, I did this. However, I soon grew weary of it. The main issue is that even though I was privy to useful information I otherwise would not be exposed to, cultural consideration lacking in this form of collaboration. The hashtags I was following overwhelmingly came from international school teachers with a student population and educational culture quite different from my teaching context. Following hashtags strikes me as being learner-centred, but as Anderson (2008a) cautions, teachers must respect cultural attributes (p. 47). Therefore, Twitter ended up being frustrating for me.
My only authentic experience with collaboration in this course was the group assignment and the experience taught me that, for me, collaboration becomes more important when developing proposals. In particular, it was Jo’s cultural insight forced me to look beyond my opinion and focus on the implications of a proposal on the target population. However, it can be difficult to do this as an individual, so I believe that it is important to collaborate with various interested parties to develop a complete vision.
I now see that what I was looking for was not necessarily collaborative opportunities, but feedback. In my discussion of online assessment, I mentioned Gibbs and Simpson’s (2005) Condition 4–Sufficient feedback is provided, both often enough and in enough detail states, “feedback may need to be quite regular, on relatively small chunks of course content, to be useful” (p.17). At the time, I had this in mind for my students, but I discovered that the weekly discussion posts and comments were exactly this—regular feedback on small sections of course content. Each week I would read different perspectives, and receive feedback on my perspective and this is when my confidence began to grow. I no longer felt alone—I had a community.
When I was ready to delve into LMSs by creating an intro module in Moodle, I felt excited but was concerned about not being able to receive feedback from classmates or the students I had in mind when creating the module. So, I fell back to the SECTIONS framework (Bates, 2014) with a particular focus on ease of use. This was the first time I had actually put the framework into use on a personal project and I was pleased with the results.
I encountered a similar concern with the lack of user feedback when working on the content module. However, after a false-start where I tried to cater to all learning styles, I ultimately used my digital story as the basis of the module and drew inspiration from Ciampa (2013) and sought to encourage student curiosity while extending control over the learning to the students. Using the digital story as a base confirmed that, when using digital media as a resource, it should add something to the course and not be used with no purpose in mind, a point Bates (2014) makes in the teaching and media selection component of the SECTIONS framework. Finishing the content module was what I consider the end of my ETEC 565 experience.
Moving Forward
As my flight path explained, I am only at the beginning of my MET journey, so in terms of lifelong learning, my immediate goal is to continue with the program. However, my experience in ETEC 565 did help me determine which courses will probably be of particular interest to me, thus focusing my journey. When considering how I will continue to learn outside of the MET program, I would like to continue to attend relevant conferences in my area. Additionally, I am fortunate to be in the so-called tech capital of China and I have identified a maker space that I would like to work with in order to put my goals of changing my role from teacher to mentor , as outlined in The New Media Consortium (2014) while using curiosity and control (Ciampa, 2013) to better meet the needs of my students.
I find it difficult to determine what types of technology I may incorporate into my course and my school as access and reliability are significant concerns. I believe the ISTE (2008) standards will be a useful starting place to identify approaches to technology that we can adjust. Then, I would like to use Bates’ (2014) SECTIONS framework to evaluate possible technologies. I would prefer to complete these evaluations in a group of interested parties, much like we did in the group assignment.
References
Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F, Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf
Bates, T. (2014). Teaching in a digital age. (Chapter 8). Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/chapter/9-5-5-social-media/
Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82-96. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcal.12036/epdf
Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005) Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/GIbbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). (2008). Standards for teachers. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/standards-for-teachers
New Media Consortium. (2014). NMC Horizon Report 2014: K-12 Edition. Retrieved from http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2014-nmc-horizon-report-k12-EN.pdf
November, A. (2012). How Twitter can be used as a powerful educational tool. November Learning [Weblog]. Retrieved from http://novemberlearning.com/educational-resources-for-educators/teaching-and-learning-articles/how-twitter-can-be-used-as-a-powerful-educational-tool/