Author Archives: jchrona

Context Is Important

The response I initially thought of for Lenora’s situation was to work with social media as a way to begin to develop a network of like-minded colleagues who could potentially share resources and tips about ways to address bullying in band (aka First Nation) schools in BC. A Facebook page or even a Twitter account could serve as an avenue to reach others in a quick, easy way that would not be dependent on uploading or downloading files with only dial-up access. Most band schools are small schools with few teachers. A networking option through social media site could help Lenora and teachers at her school connect with teachers at other and schools, and might even be useful for the public schools in nearby school districts. A blog might be another option, but this would depend on Lenora’s ease with using (or learning to use) one, as the case study indicates that time is a concern for her.

However, reading Keri’s post changed my mind. She suggested (and I paraphrase – hopefully correctly) that if Lenora could work with a group of other educators, they might be able to jointly develop a website. The collaborative effort could help with Lenore’s limited tech knowledge. Not only would the joint endeavour be valuable pro-d for the team in terms of learning more both about using technology and what might be important to help address bullying in their contexts; in addition, the final product might be richer, with more access points for other colleagues in other band schools. And as Keri notes, it also fits within a framework of the First Peoples’ Principles of Learning.

This of course, would still require some support in terms of one of the team having more access than Lenora to broadband for uploading/downloading (or the time to work at the school), and the potential for learning how to create a website. Even if a collaborative effort to create a website was not an option, the collaborative development of a social media linked community to address the bullying would be valuable.

On a completely different note (but related to the case study parameters) I want to share some thoughts about how challenging it can be for some educators to respond to situations/contexts that they do not understand are quite unlike their own. In the last few years, I have encountered many educators who presume that teaching experiences of educators around this province (and even country at times) are quite similar to their own experiences. I think this comes into play in the area of technology integration quite often. In other ETEC courses I can encountered people who actually disbelieve that some people in some remote First Nations communities for not have broadband. Yes, the tech infrastructure is growing rapidly, but if people don’t know about the jurisdictional challenges that exist when it comes to First Nations communities and First Nations (or band) schools, they don’t realize that services in some communities are not as readily available as people might think. In addition, most BC educators also do not realize that Band schools are not provincial schools and are not funded by the province (they are funded federally according to a completely different funding arrangement) and (except for a couple of schools) are not a part of a school district that can provide many of the supports that public school districts receive (i.e. in-person IT support). I think this is important to keep in mind when we respond to case studies (or potential future real world collaboration) about what people might need – it is important to find out more about the contexts other people are working/living in.

Okay – minor rant over now.

Oddly enough, I will be travelling to the Eliza Archie School in Canim Lake next month for the first time to facilitate a workshop (odd coincidence). I would be greatly surprised if any teachers there now are part of the very American- centered (i.e. not very relevant to BC First Nations) Cradleboard Teaching Project.

A Matter of Degrees

In order for Benoit to decide whether to go with Moodle or Blackboard Learn, I cannot limit myself to coming up with only one question Benoit would need to consider. As I see it, there are a number of questions he has to determine answers to. These include:

If he was to choose Moodle, how comfortable does he feel about his own learning skills to learn a new system? Is it important to him to use a system that others in his department generally use? Is it important to him to be using something that does have institutional support, even if that support is not highly effective? Porto (2015) and Coates, James & Baldwin (2005) indicate that one of the features of LMS is a move toward more standardization in teaching and a system that allows for more flexibility in design on the instructor’s part may play a role in a decision between them, so how important is a sense of autonomy to him. The case study indicates that Moodle might offer the opportunity of more autonomy as the flip side of it also having less IT support; however autonomy might also relate to flexibility in the design of the course, and which system might offer that.

Related to these questions are considerations about the types of learning activities that Benoit wants to use in his teaching; which system would better support these types of learning activities? What kinds of interactions does we want between himself and his students, between the students themselves, and between the students and the course content?

An additional consideration is whether or not he thinks it will make a difference to the students who potentially access his courses. Does this even matter to him? Are they predominantly students in the English department who might prefer a platform they are also using in other courses? The answers to these questions might have an impact in terms of thinking about “ease of use” from the SECTIONS model.

Given my limited experience of knowledge in designing completely on-line learning course, and complete lack of experience with even using Moodle (along with no information in the case study about the types of learning activities, types of assessments etc, that Benoit would develop for the course) I am ill-equipped to even estimate how much development time Benoit might need to develop an on-line version of his course.

As I was writing my response to this case study I came to realize that what I was identifying as factors that Benoit would need to consider were actually some of the things that were probably things that were important more to me than they might be to others with different (but as important to them) priorities. Some of the questions that I came up with for Benoit did not have “yes” or “no” answers; they were an attempt to identify to what degree something was important and see how one thing relates to another. It reminds me of Bates’ (2014) assertion that trying to make decisions about educational technology, even when using a model such as SECTIONS is not something that could be coded and automated.

Bates, T. (2014). Teaching in digital age http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/ (Chapter 8 on SECTIONS framework)

Coates, H., James, R., & Baldwin, G. (2005). A critical examination of the effects of Learning Management Systems on university teaching and learning. Tertiary Education and Management, 11,(1), 19-36. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11233-004-3567-9

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/

Jo’s Flight Path – Catching an Air Current or Two

My journey through education grows increasingly complex. Having recently left the public education system, I am currently a Curriculum Coordinator for the First Nations Education Steering Committee in BC. This involves, among many other things, guiding the development of teacher resources and facilitating workshops for teacher professional development (for BC teachers and educators in the First Nations education system), along with supporting curriculum development teams at the BC Ministry of Education.

My professional experience includes 14 years teaching in both the K-12 (secondary English and Humanities) and post-secondary systems in British Columbia, in addition to working as an Advisor to the BC Ministry of Education, a Policy Analyst with FNESC, and serving as a Faculty Associate in Simon Fraser University’s Teacher Education Program. Over the past two decades, I have been actively involved in the areas of curriculum and resource development and writing (provincially and nationally), professional learning through inquiry networks, and literacy development education at the secondary level.

Amid all this I am soon to be completing my Masters in Educational Technology. My flight path for this course echoes my reason for undertaking this course of study from the outset. I chose this field of study for my Masters because I knew little about educational technology and wanted to learn more. My learning was for me alone – not to meet any specific professional goals.

Along the way, an idea began to grow in my mind. I am a proponent of trying to help other educators understand concepts of teaching and learning that extend beyond the generally post-industrial British model Canada has inherited (albeit with significant changes since). One of these frameworks is found in the First Peoples Principles of Learning (FPPL), a set of principles of education that reflect the shared understandings of the First Peoples of BC. A prominent construct included in these principles is the understanding that living and learning is inextricably tied to sense of place and connection to the land. The community and natural environment are regarded as the “classroom”, and “land was regarded as the mother of all people” (Kirkness, 1998, p. 10). In a similar vein, constructivist theorists view learning as highly contextualized; knowledge does not exist independent of the culture and history of people and place (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996).

Since the recent changes in the BC education system (specifically with regard to curriculum changes) have enabled the FPPL to gain more prominence, the idea coalesced as a question: is there a way to integrate educational technology in the schools in ways that could still honour the FPPL? And, in my perspective the most challenging scenario would involve creating an on-line learning course that also explicitly honours the student’s relationship to place (including their natural environment) and others.

Another question has emerged alongside that original query: is there a way to use technology to create a learning experience for other educators to help them understand how to integrate the FFPL into their classrooms? In many of the workshops I currently facilitate, educators frequently express interest in being able to continue their learning in informal ways with other teachers around the province. A short time ago I created a WordPress blog to help teachers who were just beginning to explore the FPPL. It can be found at here. The purpose of that site is to be informational, rather than interactive. I am now wondering if there is an additional way to support educators’ continued learning in this area in an interactive learning format.

These are the two questions that inform my flight path for ETEC 565A.

In this course I am interested in learning what I can about learning management systems, and seeing if a course could be designed using one of those systems that can still reflect the FPPL. Because experience with distance learning technologies has been limited to this program, my goals are simple:

Learn what I can about creating a Moodle or Blackboard learning space. At this point I am more interested in focusing on Moodle, as I am somewhat familiar with Blackboard from a learner’s perspective (as a student in the MET program).
Gain some hands on experience with more multi-media for educational purposes. I am interested in media that is very easy to use. As indicated in Bates’ (2014) SECTIONS model, people are “more likely to use technology that is quick and easy to use” (p.271) and that require little to no time for people to learn to use.
Explore the possibility of setting up formal learning experiences via social media. As Bates (2014) indicates, recent developments in social media have increased the potential for using it to supplement other learning spaces, or to use it exclusively as the learning space.

I anticipate that the resources I need would simply be some general guidance in the use of the previously mentioned technology and media, and time to play and explore (as that is one of the ways I learn best). In some sense I am approaching my learning through a lens of unstructured inquiry guided by my own questions. I anticipate that I will attempt to learn what I can from the structured activities in this course and determine what elements of that learning I can apply to answering my questions.

References:

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

John-Steiner, V. & Mahn, H. (1996). Socio-cultural approaches to learning and development: A Vygotskian framework. Educational Psychologist, 31(3-4), 191-206

Kirkness, V. (1998). Our peoples’ education: Cut the shackles; cut the crap; cut the mustard. Canadian Journal of Native Education Canadian Journal of Native Education, 22(1), 10- 15.