Précis of flight path :
Twelve weeks ago, at the beginning of this course, my primary objective was to learn more about the selection process of appropriate and effective technology by educators, for learning. I was hoping this course would broaden my views of different LMS and their purpose for online and hybrid learning. ETEC 565A provide me with an endless array of learning opportunities to pick up new technical skills and further refine my existing skill set which I drew upon the course of the program.
One of my goals for this course was to acquire the knowledge to be able to present some guidelines and criteria to my school board, in order to enable them to make more educated choices when it comes to spending large amounts of money in technology for our schools. Although I haven’t been as active in the forums as I would have wanted, with each week’s readings I learned more about the process of selecting technology for educational purposes. I had weekly discussions with my colleagues, supervisors and with the educational technology committee at my board about what I was learning in this course and how it could help us find our path. As a board, we need to “model digital age work and learning” (ISTE Standards, 2008 p. 1). Since January, we have had a collective reflexion on the board’s practices for selecting, purchasing and making technology available in our school. While the IT department is still responsible for the purchase of technology, it is now up to the educational technology committee to evaluate and select technologies for the board. This committee is formed of one teacher, one curriculum advisor, two ed-tech consultants, the IT director, the educational director, one school principal and one board supervisor. The mandate of the committee has been clearly defined: to set a long-term plan for the digital shift for the school board.
Social media was also a topic I wanted to know more about. Although I use social media daily for personal and professional purposes, I am still unsure of its exact purpose and place in K to 12 education. There is a huge debate when it comes to security and privacy in social media, especially for kids under the age of 18. So I thought Bates (2014) SECTIONS was very pertinent and allowed a complete evaluation process for selection of multimedia tools for education, since it addresses the security issues. I still believe that not all educators have the knowledge to use all the criteria in Bates’ model. Therefore, it is my belief that selecting proper tools or making social media use policies in school, should be issues that are addressed my heterogenous committees where educators, principals, administrators, and IT personnel can have a voice.
OVERALL ETEC-565A EXPERIENCE:
Overall, I found my ETEC experience to be an invaluable and a practical learning opportunity. I was able to explore and gain a better understanding of the tools that I would need to help guide me in the development of my Blackboard Connect online Course module. I was able to learn about different LMS like Moodle and Connect, and compare them to the LMS I am currently working in (D2L) using valid criteria like Bates (2014) SECTIONS and Nel, Dreyer & Carstens’s (2010) primary and secondary criteria. Although Bates proposes a methodical model that can be used pretty easily by educators, Nel, Dreyer & Carstens’s model also resonated with me as it acknowledges the reality of educators who are too often left alone with poor background information to make multimedia selection decisions for their classrooms.
Weekly discussions, in the forum and with my colleagues at work offered a great deal of insight, support and inspiration throughout my learning process. I did find it confusing at times to have to navigate between two platforms for this course. I which the course was all held in one place, allowing me to make sure to follow all conversations. I liked that our instructor was very open-minded about her selection of a platform for this course and always had an open ear for comments, suggestions and concerns about this. This contributed to creating a community of learners within the course (Prensky, 2010).
Creating an online course for an LMS isn’t something new for me, as it was my primary job for the past 5 years (at certain moments of this course, I wished I would have taken it five years ago, which would have made certain parts of my job so much easier). I still learned a great deal from this assignment. At first, it felt awkward to me to start by designing as assessment while developing the introduction module of the course. I struggled a great deal with this part of the assignment, not sure of what I needed to include in the assesement. When I began working on the content module, I felt as if I knew exactly where I was going. Having the assessment for the module designed before, gave me clear orientation for learning goals and teaching strategies (Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J, 1998, 2011).
Next Steps – #profdev
In my current role at the school board, I will continue to be the voice of the literature and research on our educational technology committee, bringing light to the decision-making process by providing valuable information about what research has to say on multimedia tool selection and design. I will admit that not all decisions are taken at the board level. Certain tool like a cloud based suite (our choice is now set on Office 365) have to be chosen my the board, but certain decisions are still in the hands of our schools and teachers. For example, schools still hold their budget when it comes to computer or mobile device purchases. And although the board supplies certain standard software, it is up tho the schools and/or teachers to select and purchase any other software or application they choose. It is with that in mind that I am currently working on an evaluation rubric (based on Bates’ SECTIONS, 2014) that can help teachers select the best technologies to enable students to reach their learning goals. I also want to work on creating a more collaborative culture in our schools and in our board.
Moving forward, I will certainly continue to be a lifelong learner. I have the opportunity to attend a few educational technology conference every year. I have also dabbled with Twitter in the past, as I see the potential for developing a professional network (November 2012). I would like to learn more about the use of social media (particularly Twitter) as a means of professional development and collaborative learning (Bates 2014).
Furthermore, I hope to deepen my knowledge and understanding of HTML authoring and digital video-creating and editing tool (although a very time consuming task, I enjoyed creating a digital story and agree it can be a powerful learning tool, especially in an online course). I hope to achieve this goal through self-directed learning and by soliciting help and support from my professional network (which I will also be working on developing!).
References
Bates, T. (2014). Teaching in a digital age. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/
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
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). (2008). Standards for teachers. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/standards-for-teachers
Nel, C., Dreyer, C., & Carstens, W. A. M. (2010). Educational technologies: A classification and evaluation. Tydskrif vir letterkunde, 35(4), 238-258. Retrieved from http://www.ajol.info/index.php/tvl/article/download/53794/42346
Prensky, M. (2010). Teaching digital natives : Partnering for real learning. Thousand Oaks, USA: Corwin.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice-Hall.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2011). Understanding by design guide to creating high quality units. Alexandria, VA: Association for supervision and curriculum development.