ETEC565A ePortfolio

I can attach a few dates to events along the path of learning to create web pages.

• Oct 18/10, the Wimba classroom.  My jaw dropped.  Build the course pages outside of Moodle, and upload them?  What?  Why?  I felt my heels dig in.  How could I possibly do this?
• 29 days ago.  I loaded a free, 30-day trial version of Dreamweaver onto my computer, and started to explore.

What’s the journey been like, so far?  The path has been rough in places, with a steep climb, but some fantastic views along the way.  The landscape is beginning to level out, and this seems like a good time to record a few notes:

• I have unintentionally followed John’s rule of three.  Three times, I’ve re-started from a blank page, as the design I had been working on lead me to a dead-end.  But each false-start taught me something – about simplifying the design, using templates, and planning the site.
• Sometimes, the best way to make progress is to turn the computer off, and make a cup of tea.  This could be because a bit of distance gives some perspective on design problems.  But once, when I was getting a mysterious error message and thought I was headed back to the beginning again, turning the computer off and restarting it cleared up the problem.
• Html seems scary, but it can be your friend.  Sometimes, the design view in Dreamweaver just didn’t give the result I was looking for.  It isn’t that hard to locate the problem in the html, and correct it by mimicking code that works.  Right now, my proficiency with html is limited to reading and mimicking simple code.
• The decision to use Dreamweaver wasn’t arbitrary.  Dreamweaver is on my computer at work – as a matter of fact; it’s on all of the computers in the school – in the “Arts” folder.  This seemed mysterious, until I very quickly realized how much of web page design is about the look of the page.  I was talking with an artist friend this weekend, and when he asked what I was doing with my art work these days, I spoke words I could never have imagined a month ago.  “I’m designing web pages.”

What does the path ahead look like?  That’s the next question to explore, but right now – I’ve got a course to build!

My story, Montreal in March (working title), tells the tale of a road trip.  I would use the story to introduce an activity where students plan and budget for a trip.

The tools I used in authoring my story (Google Maps, Flickr and Picasa), met the basic SECTIONS criteria (not blocked by school-board filters, easy-to-use, reliable, and free), that eliminated some of the other tools.  In addition, I chose Google Maps because the road trip is naturally suited to a story map, and because students could use a tool such a Google Maps to work on, and present their assignment.  Flickr is a large repository of photos, searchable by keyword, and the search results can be filtered by permissions associated with the photos.  I used one of my own photos for the story, and chose Picasa as the hosting site, in order to gain some familiarity with another image repository.  An interesting feature of all of these tools is their interactive nature.  Interested in what the silver dome in the photo is?  “Search nearby”, and connect to the history of the Bonsecours market.  Want to know what the countryside around Montreal ‘really’ looks like?  Go to streetview.  Viewers can also comment on map presentations and photos.

How did the choice of tool affect how I told the story?  The story (based on an actual incident) existed initially as a verbal story – told with much embellishment.  In its initial written form, it was much shorter than the verbal tale.  As I found photos to support the story, the text become even shorter.  However, we know that ‘every picture tells a story’ – so in a sense the story expanded, at the same time that it became shorter.

At this moment, I feel that I should cut about a third of the story – but I don’t have the heart to!  Maybe I will, by Sunday night.

I looked over the units when the work for module 4 was released, and my heart sank.  The digital story assignment hadn’t just gone away, like I was hoping it would!  As a matter of fact, it was looming!  And I don’t have an idea for a story.

I better get an idea – right away – or I’m finished!  But I don’t have an idea, at all.  And John’s clarification didn’t help.  Create a story?  Narrative?  Story-telling?  Oh no!  My brain has frozen.

I went for a coffee after work yesterday with a friend and colleague who works at a different campus.  During our rambling conversation, the topic of the digital story-telling assignment came up.   While I was trying to explain to her what it was all about, my brain started to warm up and I could see how I could use a story in my teaching, and within a very short time, I had my idea!

This illustrates for me the importance of being able to discuss ideas, when you are learning.  It convinces me, more than ever, that my students (who are working on self-paced courses, usually in isolation from students working on the same course) will benefit from using social media to connect with other learners.

My story?  It has practically written itself!  I have my first draft, which I’m looking forward to polishing.  I’ve been exploring the different tools, and have enjoyed looking for illustrations.  I’ll put it all together over the next few days.

I’m trying to understand why I felt so unengaged by the wiki activity.  I think some things made the experience more difficult than it had to be – the html codes, no threaded discussion, large number of contributors.  I don’t have a good sense of when or how wikis can be useful, so for me, wikis are still an open question.

I’ve started using a new (to me) type of activity with my grade 11 Physics class.  One that takes the course outside the LMS, and brings students’ interests into the class.

In Physics, it’s so important for students to apply the concepts to the world around them.  I’ve started using a different type of assignment, to give them practice doing this.  The activity involves finding a general interest picture on the internet (not from a Physics website) that illustrates a concept they’ve been learning about.  The assignment uses a discussion board, and takes this form:

• Post the link to the photograph you’ve chosen
• Write a description of how it illustrates the concept, and submit it to a dropbox
• Choose two photographs that classmates have posted, and post to the discussion board, explaining how those illustrate the concept

In a variation on this, I’ve asked students to create a problem, based on the photograph they have chosen, post the link and problem to the discussion, and submit the solution to the dropbox.

My purpose?  I want students to realise how many different ways Physics concepts are applied – and I want them to see those connections in situations that interest them.  I ask the students not to publish their own interpretation of the photo they chose, because I don’t want there to be a sense that theirs is the “official” version.

The results, so far?  Students generally choose interesting pictures (beautiful, awe-inspiring – or funny) that involve an activity they’re interested in.  The discussions around the pictures reveal much about how they can apply Physics to real-world situations.

An unintended result?  Students respond with interest and enthusiastic comments to the photos their classmates have chosen.  It gives the students a chance to share personal interests with each other – and think it is helping to ‘gel’ the class.

Yesterday, I came across some ideas for online activities from a pair of language teachers at Six favourite teaching online activities – e-moderation station.  Their ideas also bring other media, and the world outside the classroom (or LMS) into the course – and can be used to help ‘gel’ the class, or adapted as icebreakers.

The problem is that it uses a lot of words from the English language.

Students learning Physics can casually use a word such as “work” without realizing that it has a meaning different from its everyday one.  Not only is the meaning different, but it doesn’t have a direct translation into an English word.  There is no Physics-English pocket dictionary.  In order to learn the language of Physics, learners have to develop their understanding of the concepts at the same time they are learning the vocabulary.

The Frayer model is a graphic organizer that can be adapted to help students learn new concepts and expand their vocabularies.  Student can work with a template that has sections for definition, characteristics, examples, non-examples, etc.  This is even more valuable if students work collaboratively to complete the template, since they will discuss concepts, and practice using their new vocabulary.

I’ve been looking at communication tools that I can use in an online science course to help students learn to use the specialized language of a scientific discipline.  Moodle’s glossary tool seems like it might be quite useful.  The teacher can set up the glossaries so that she, or the students can edit, add comments to, and rate the entries.  Another powerful feature is that glossaries can auto-link to every appearance of vocabulary words throughout the course.  However, there is no “history” of changes to the entry, so the teacher cannot assess students’ development of the concepts.  And new glossary entries appear as a blank html editor, rather than as a template such as the Frayer model.

Another way to set up a glossary is with a wiki, using Wikispaces.  Each new page has an area for discussion, and a history of activity.  Students can work collaboratively to refine an entry, using the discussion area to write about the meaning of the concept, and to explain their reasons for changing the entry.  A template for new entries can help students organize their work, as they explore the concept fully.  However, the glossary can’t auto-link to the course.

Which tool is the best choice for developing a glossary?  It depends on the purpose of the glossary.  If the glossary is to be a reference tool, then Moodle’s glossary, auto-linked to the course is most useful.  If the glossary is to be used as a collaborative activity that helps students develop concepts, then Wikispaces should be used, since it encourages more student-student interaction.

I start to think I’m getting the hang of this . . . and then I’m back to being completely frustrated by Moodle.

My first impression was that visually, Moodle is quite ugly.  But I’ve played around a bit, and made a splash page that looks more interesting that the default, text-filled page.

Now I’m finding that sometimes the tools don’t work the way I expect them to.  I’m working with a wiki, and sometimes the changes I make to a page just don’t show up.  They show up in the history and in the html editor, but not in the latest version of the page.

Is the answer always to install another browser?  How will students react to that instruction?  How will the on-site teachers react, when they have to repeatedly help students use an LMS that behaves in unpredictable ways?

The wiki itself is clunky.  It isn’t easy to link between pages of the wiki.  Students can’t make comments, explaining their reasons for modifying a page.  I’d rather use Wikispaces.

Moodle . . . this is affecting your rating on “ease of use and reliability” and “encourages reciprocity and cooperation among students” . . . Better shape up!!

No, I don’t mean asynchronous communication – I mean asynchronous classes.

At our alternative high school, we offer continuous intake at our widely dispersed campuses.  Students begin working on a print-based course anytime during the year, and their progress through the course is self-paced.  The campuses are much smaller than the typical high school, and students often find they have few opportunities to learn together with other students.  Can we enhance our print-based courses by offering opportunities for interaction?  Is it possible to form a community of learning from these independent learners?  What communication tools can we use to create a supportive environment? Can we structure online learning activities to help our students develop their thought process through discourse?

I’m working with a team of teachers on a new version of a science course, and I have been thinking about how students could participate in asynchronous discussions.  I don’t think it would be very useful to have discussions based on different units of the course – this may spread the participation too thin, since the students will all be at various points in the course.  I think participation may be broader if the discussions are structured in such a way that students working at any point in the course can participate in them.

One way to design these discussions could be to build them around the Goals of the Science Program.  For example, one of the goals is “to relate science to technology, society, and the environment”.   Students could participate in a discussion that asked them to describe a technology related to the science unit they are currently working on.

Another way to structure the discussion could be to focus on the “Big Ideas” of the science curriculum – a focus that we have kept as we work on developing the course.  Students have been working with the fundamental concepts of science throughout their schooling, and can participate in discussions about one of the “Big Ideas” of the course, whether or not they have completed that particular unit, yet.  This can act as a preview for students starting in the course, and as a reflection for those nearing the end.

Another way to offer students an opportunity for interaction could be to have collaborative tasks designed “to develop the skills, strategies, and habits of mind required for scientific investigation” – another of the goals of the science program.  Students can apply these skills to scientific research or inquiry, across all units of the course.

I never know what Monday morning will bring.  My students tend to be online when I am not.  I’m connected through my work day, but they tend to show up at the end of the school day, in the evenings and on weekends. 

On Friday, I assigned a set of practice problems (with a warning that they are challenging), and opened a discussion board for students to share strategies and solutions.  It wasn’t until Sunday morning that some students realized that different approaches to one of the problems resulted in different answers!  This doesn’t happen in Physics – does it?  There has been some interesting activity, as students have tried to sort out which, if any, of the approaches is correct.

This has really opened a door to looking at the assumptions we make in Physics when we solve a problem.  I’ve asked a few questions, to guide their discussion – and turned it back to them.

I can’t take credit for the problem that lead to the discussion – it came with the package.  The problem provided extra information that doesn’t “fit” the situation – in other words, it had a “red herring”.  And it lead to a richer discussion than the usual “text-book” problems.

So now I’m thinking about how to design Physics problems so that they will lead to richer discussions – provide an extra piece of information, don’t provide a needed piece of information and require the students to justify their assumptions, describe a situation and ask the students to develop a question, ask “what is another question we can ask?”, . . .

I had no idea synchronous communication tools were so . . . synchronous!

While I was typing a response to a comment, three other comments would pop up.  And those comments are in response to . . . what?  For my brain, it was a bit like listening to four radios playing different stations.  Less like a conversation, and more like everyone talking at once.  My first chat!

When I first started teaching online, I had some concerns about communicating using text in asynchronous discussion boards.  I was afraid that conversation would be diminished because it would lack the non-verbal cues that we rely on so much.  I thought that the time-delay would mean that a discussion would lose the energy it gets from immediate responses.   Since I’ve had more experience – both as teacher and student – I’ve come to appreciate threaded asynchronous discussions for promoting thoughtful exchange within the class.

I’m aware, though, that my students are more accustomed to synchronous communication (chat).  My experience has been very limited – I’ve had chat rooms in my courses that students could use for group work, and I’ve chatted with one student at a time to clear up questions about the course.  I have found that my students have not made a lot of use of the chat room – they seem to have even more problems than we do, trying to be online at the same time! 

Thank you to our group!  Last night’s chat session, besides being very productive and helping to propel our work, was my first real experience with synchronous communication.  It gave me so much to think about.  Chat really isn’t about thoughtful exchange – it’s more about making decisions as a group.

There is a skill to using these communication tools – both as a teacher and as a student.  As a teacher, or course designer, we have to be aware of the strengths of each form of communication.  We have to know what we want to accomplish, and choose the appropriate tool.  Students need to know how to use the tools – the type of response that works in a chat doesn’t work on an asynchronous discussion board.  As a secondary teacher, I need to teach my students how to use each of the communication tools appropriately, so they make the best use of them.  I’m going to revisit The Tools for Successful Online Teaching [1] for ideas about using synchronous and asynchronous communication in my courses.  In the past, I have found this an excellent source of ideas for using course tools effectively.

[1] Dawley, L. (2007).  The Tools for Successful Online Teaching.  Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing.