Student/Teacher Friendly and Classroom Ready

Resources are meant to be used, however not all resources are always classroom-ready meaning that often a resource has to be adapted and modified in order to fit a particular teacher’s plan.  Often those resources are in print or digital copyright form, which may be easy to photo-copy, but may not be easily shared or distributed digitally.  My final Vision project of a comprehensive Socials Studies 8 course keeps that in mind, that any material must be;

• Open, free, and easily manipulated.
• The resources must be made digitally accessible
• The resources should include supporting content

Open, Free, and Easily Manipulated

Early on in my career, I was asked to help co-ordinate and design an online depository of resources for teachers within the Shuswap (SD83) district.  My name was brought up and I was asked to help create this depository because of the courses that I was already providing online.  The hope was to create a series of online course materials, organized by subject and grade that teachers could add and download for free.  Unfortunately, the project fell apart when the colleague that I was asked to work with became insistent that all submitted material had to be converted to “html text”.  His insistent argument was a philosophical one that focused around not wanting to use any form of “corporate digital formatting”, meaning that he refused to create or distribute anything that was in Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF formatting.  At that time, my feeling was; “Why not use something that everyone uses and is familiar with?”  Of course, converting documents to html webpages and still maintain a printer-friendly formatting and design for easy use was not an easy task back then.   That problem was compounded when given the sheer amount of work that just I was providing to the project, not to mention the amount we were hoping to attract and share.  The Windmill he was tilting at became too big of a hurdle to overcome.  The next year, an opportunity to change districts came up and unfortunately the project never came to fruition.

What I learned from this experience is that if you want people to use and share resources, you shouldn’t deliberately create hurdles or technological obstacles that would become barriers to the concept of sharing.  After that, I created my own webpage at www.trickey.ca and have been adding and maintaining that website for well over 15 years.  I have always used Microsoft Word for my worksheet resources because almost every teacher that I know, knows how to use the program and most programs will read a .doc or a .docx file extension.  As the years have progressed, other operating systems like Apple and Android and applications such as Google Docs have come onto the market, however Microsoft’s operating system still powers close to 80% of the world’s computers.  In the beginning, I was using and creating videos using the .WMV which is a Microsoft video format or a .MOV video format which is used by Apple, but for this project I have re-formatted my supporting videos to the .MP4 format which is universally accessible and does not require a media player plug-in for most browsers, meaning that the videos can now be viewed directly from the webpage.  Using universally accepted formats that people are familiar with is key to sharing resources online.

Digitally Accessible

Digital resources are easy to share and easy to create but it is not the “webpage” that makes the difference between a helpful or inconsequential online resource.  I have been asked many times over my career to help people create a “webpage”, but it is often not the “webpage” that causes issues, it is the amount of digital material that they have.  Teachers of my generation have a lot of excellent resources to share, but unfortunately, a lot of it is still paper-based.  When asked to help someone make a webpage, my first question has always been; “What digital content do you have to share?”  If the content is in the form of paper-based print material, then that material has to be first scanned, digitized, and then formatted into a usable document such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word.  This can be a very time-consuming and sometimes technically difficult task for many and although webpages in themselves are easy to create, it is the digitized content and formatting that often becomes the biggest hurdle for teachers to share online.

In the past, I’ve created course materials that are linked to popular textbooks that were used around the province, so those resources were readily accessed and utilized.  When I started to design and create my new Socials 8 course, I have decided not to base it around a textbook because I’ve noticed that I could reach an even greater audience if I didn’t have to first rely upon them having the textbook I was using.  For this “reboot” of my Socials 8 course, I decided to create my own “readings” to go along with worksheets and activities.  In this sense, I’m now creating a truly self-contained online course that is open, free, adaptable and free of the cost of associated resources.

Supporting Resources

Teachers have always supplemented lessons that they teach with additional supporting materials.  It may be a video that adds to the discussion or adapted materials for students who struggle with regular assigned work.  My new Socials 8 course is providing supplemental resources such as .MP4 videos linked to each lesson and I am also providing adapted material that looks just like what other students are receiving, but have design measures put into place to help such as cloze responses for written work and imbedded space for written work to help lessen the organizational aspect of assigned work.  I will provide examples of these adapted materials on the webpage, but will withhold all of those adapted materials to the public.  The adapted worksheets being what they are, would allow “regular” students to take an “easy route” that would not be as beneficial as if they did the work on their own without assistance.  I will include my email on the webpage and if a teacher with a school district account wishes to email me, then I’ll be happy to share those adapted materials with them.

My Audience

My audience is obviously teachers and students within the BC school system, however the topics in Socials 8 are used in many other jurisdictions as well.  The ease of access, the organization of the units, the supporting materials all make my new Socials 8 course a prime resource for teachers who may wish to supplement their own lessons, or more importantly are looking for a resource that can be shared online if schools have to migrate to online learning this winter due to COVID-19 concerns.