A 2-way Mirror
At our campus, teacher’s offices adjoin the main teaching area, with a 2-way mirrored window in the wall separating the spaces. With a 2-way mirror, you see yourself in your current situation with the surroundings behind you, and simultaneously you see through the glass to the space ahead. The life of a teacher is an endless swirl of tasks that require immediate attention, but I’ll take this opportunity for reflection on where I am and where I’ve been, and also on what’s ahead and how this affects my work with students.
All of my work in this course has had direct applications to my work as a teacher. As I approached each assignment, my thoughts were not “what would I do if . . . ?” but rather “how will I . . .?” There is no ‘break’ after this course ends. The same questions, the same challenges and the same opportunities will be there on Monday.
In case I might ever forget it, my students and my colleagues act as reminder that I am not an educational technologist – I am a teacher who uses educational technologies. A necessary point of reflection is to consider which technologies are most appropriate. Sections [1] and the Seven Principles [2] are particularly helpful for selecting useful approaches, and with practice, I will become more skilled at using these frameworks before making choices, rather than using them to understand what went wrong! The criteria that resonate most with me are the ones that focus on students and teaching/learning, although the ones dealing with organizational issues certainly shape (or limit) my choices.
Where have I been?
Is there some rule that the things we push against, initially, are the ones that turn out to be most valuable? I’ve noticed, in myself and in others (colleagues, students), there can be resistance to trying something new (”I’ve never done this, this will be difficult, I don’t have time, why do I have to do this?”) can be followed by enthusiastic adoption, “That was great, that wasn’t that hard, I love doing this!” The two tasks that I resisted the most, the digital story and designing web pages, turn out to be the ones that I’ve enjoyed the most.
All of the assignments have been relevant and/or interesting, to varying degrees. Among the surprises was the LMS proposal, which was a valuable exercise in considering educational technologies from an administrator’s point of view. This is a change from my usual perspective, and I’ve found it has changed the way I discuss plans for courses and technologies.
The Tools
There are a few problems associated with learning to use new tools.
Sometimes it’s a problem just to know what tools are available. Before this course started, I was looking for an LMS with communication tools, for connecting our isolated learners, and of course I’ve found it, in Moodle [3].
The toolkit exploration was helpful in providing a survey of available tools, and I’ll use the toolkit as a resource if or when I decide to use a particular tool in my teaching. Of course, the tools I’ve become the most familiar with are the ones I have used the most.
Another problem is that when you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Sections [1] and the Seven Principles [2] will provide the framework for making a judgement about whether a favourite tool will be the most useful or helpful in a particular situation.
The main problem of learning to use a tool is really just a problem of finding, or making the time. I haven’t found a solution for this.
The Experience
“Why am I doing this?” There have certainly been many times that I’ve asked that, during this course. One thing about taking a course, that always turns out to be valuable, is that I am reminded of the experience of being a student.
A large part of my experience in this course has been the weekly discussions. I have been really impressed by my classmates’ input and have enjoyed the interactions. The class discussions were more enjoyable than those in other online courses I have taken, and I wonder if this might partly be due to the fact that this course is part of a program, so that relationships formed in this class may extend beyond the limited timeframe of this course. I’m also interested in the role the digital story assignment, which gave insight into the personalities and interests of classmates, may have had in building relationships within the class.
However, sometimes the discussions weren’t focussed on experiences that are most relevant and current for me, or didn’t follow the path that was most interesting to me, hence the blog posts. There were experiences or observations that were so compelling to me that I couldn’t help but write about them, in order to process them. Some of these became blog posts. However, there were so many interesting questions to pursue that some didn’t even get blogged.
For example, Boris and his poor students who had to memorize the periodic table. This problem is highly relevant to me (in our Math department, we are having similar discussions about reviewing basic skills), and I tried building several tools to deal with Boris’s problem. The obvious one, a sort of programmed learning using the lessons tool in Moodle, would take ages to set up, and minutes for the students to work through. A second solution, a database of review questions that students build seems more manageable for the teacher and more valuable to the students. By the time I had done all this, it simply didn’t feel necessary to blog about it – I had processed the problem and arrived at a solution that makes sense in my context.
Learning website design, creating and planning layout, writing the material and doing all of these things simultaneously, using an iterative process – I thrive on this. It has been a long time since I’ve done this type of work, and I had forgotten how much I enjoy this type of thing.
What’s next?
What’s next? In the short term, I have to ‘use the tools’ and include Differentiated Instruction and Universal Design for Learning [4] in the SNC1P lessons. I have been talking with the department head about this course, and plan to show it to a VP very soon. Developing the course site wasn’t just an exercise. I really see it as a way to help our students by providing a richer experience and teaching them skills that they need for the future.
A priority at our school is to provide students with opportunities to demonstrate learning from several subject areas in a single assignment. For example, a student could plan an ecotour to demonstrate their mastery of concepts from Math, Science and Geography. Last week, a colleague was describing an activity she had planned for kinesthetic learners who are studying cell cycles. Her plan is that students build and manipulate models, and take photographs of the stages of the cell cycle. She was thinking about how students could present their work, and I showed her some of the digital story tools. This led to a conversation about how much time it takes students to learn to use tools like this, and whether this leads to improved learning. Some students are very interested in learning to use software tools, and the skills they develop as they work on course assignments should count as credit towards a communication technology or media studies course. Currently, we don’t have either of those courses at our school, but I will be exploring the idea sparked by our conversation. (Is there a rule about this? Do all ideas develop from conversations?)
The tool I need to explore more (it began by gently calling my name – and now it is practically shouting for attention) is video. I do some very basic videos to demonstrate concepts for my Physics class, and rely on pausing the camera, and multiple re-takes, to get a video that has few enough errors that I feel I can post it. A colleague has asked me to help her get started with doing this (next week), and this is motivation for me to become more familiar with editing.
For my online physics class which starts in February, I want students to build a resource they can use for study and review. I will probably use a wiki for this purpose, and I’ll definitely be looking for ideas on how to provide a structure for the assignment, and how to help students develop skills for working effectively using tools for online collaboration [5].
References
[1] Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers
[2] Chickering, A.W. and Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), p. 3-7.
[4] Education for All (2005). http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/reports/speced/panel/speced.pdf , accessed Dec 3 2010.
[5] Dawley, L. (2007). The Tools for Successful Online Teaching. Hershey PA: Information Science Publishing