Précis of my Flight Path:
At the onset of this course when I first wrote my flight path assignment, I explained that I was an elementary school educator with hopes and intentions to improve the learning environment that I am providing for my students by increasing my use of technology in the classroom as a means to diversify my instruction while engaging more students consistently. I established a number of learning goals at that time as well in regard to what I wanted to learn in this particular MET course. It was my hope that I would be able to find out more about how technology can be used in the classroom setting to differentiate my instruction. I also hoped to learn how to create, select and implement technology tools and resources to enable me to strengthen my skills as an educator. My final goal involved learning about how to create a more student centered or constructivist approach in the classroom in the hopes of increasing both student engagement and student accountability in regard to their own learning.

Reflection on the eLearning Toolkit:
In all honesty, I did not use the eLearning toolkit as much as I expected to. When the course first began, I clicked through the various links and briefly perused the provided information. I found the information to be helpful, but somewhat limited. More often than not, I found myself using Google searches to find out additional information on the various topics as they surfaced in each module. I did take some time to work through the provided information on both Learning Management Systems and also those that were on web design and HTML authoring. I had not done any considerable research into learning management systems prior to this course and I found that this area of the toolkit did provide a good starting place for my investigations. I also found some of the links and the general information provided in the web design area of the toolkit to also be beneficial. Before deciding on my themes and general site set-up in both my ePortfolio and my Moodle site, I spent some time going through the design recommendations, as I wanted to be sure that my site was visually appealing, while keeping my navigation simple and straightforward. Some of the links that I found somewhat useful were the various sites provided that demonstrated what not to do when building a website. Sometimes it helps to see what you shouldn’t do before you start creating your own website or learning resource. I found the link provided via hypertext to ‘Web Design Basics’ which takes you to this site http://webdesign.about.com/od/webdesignbasics/u/webdesignbasics.htm, to be quite helpful as there are a variety of other links to related sites provided, making it easy to take your own path through the available material. Other than checking on a few specific content ideas later on in the term, I did not use the toolkit much beyond my initial usage of it early on in the course.

My ETEC 565A Experience:
Overall, I enjoyed my experiences in ETEC 565A. The course turned out to be slightly different than what I had envisioned from the initial course description that I read when selecting it as one of my MET electives, but nonetheless, it was a very valuable learning experience. Although the case studies were worthwhile tasks to go through, I found the discourse surrounding them to be quite repetitive especially toward the end of the week. I think that my experience of the case study discussions was improved upon when the class was divided into two smaller groups for these discussions. Although I still continued to read all of the posts, I limited my conversation to my assigned group and felt the conversation was richer and extended my learning more substantially than the previous case studies in which the entire class was posting in the same discussion area. Because of this improved experience, I built a similar task into my Moodle content module and would definitely consider this small group option in my own classroom practice.

Although it is unlikely that I will actually use the partial Moodle course that I have developed, I think that the experience of working with an LMS was advantageous. I found it interesting as an individual who has only experienced an LMS as a student, to get a behind the scenes look at all that goes into designing, creating and delivering an online course. It was quite an eye opening experience and it gave me a greater understanding and appreciation of course developers and instructors. As two of my professional goals are to differentiate my instruction and allow students more autonomy in their own learning, I can now see how an LMS (or web tools that have similar affordances) can help me to achieve these goals. I enjoyed the ePortfolio element of the course, as I felt a real sense of accomplishment in building a resource that grew and felt more substantial with each passing week. I also like that I now have a record of my growth throughout the duration of the course and can access all of my course assignments from one location, with the exception of my work on Moodle. I am glad that our weekly discourse was not done in the same web blog environment though, as in the other course that I am taking at this time, our weekly discourse is carried out via a web blog community and I have struggled a great deal with the lack of structure (for me personally, anyway) that comes with this sort of community of learning. I certainly understand the pedagogical choices behind this medium, but I most definitely prefer the structure of Blackboard for our weekly discussions. My main issue with the web blog format is that I feel like I am always missing some of the posts and thus also missing out on potential learning and valuable conversations. The only aspect of this course that I was slightly disappointed in, is really just a personal one. I wished that I would have been able to take the time to visit the ePortfolios of my classmates more frequently to further explore their documented learning and to potentially learn from the approaches that they took in their site design, posts and digital stories. Maybe I will have more time to do so before the course officially closes to me, as I know that I will learn even more than I already have, even from just being able to look at the web tools that my classmates selected for the telling of their digital stories.

My Next Steps:
My next steps are exciting ones and I have already started taking them! I have been contemplating using Edmodo with my students since I first learned about it in one of my courses last year. I have taken my time and done quite a bit of research on this web tool and others like it. One of the resources that we have been provided with in this course is the Bates and Poole’s (2003) SECTIONS framework and this is the framework that I used in making my decision. Although the cost element of the framework was not really relevant to my decision, I took a great deal of time to consider all of the other sections of the framework before I decided to move forward with my use of Edmodo. I wanted to be sure that I was selecting this tool for the right reasons and be assured that my students would find the platform easy to use and appealing. One of my unexpected challenges in moving forward with Edmodo came from the “O’ section for organizational issues. The question ‘what are the organizational requirements, and the barriers to be removed before this technology can be used successfully?” (Bates & Poole, 2003, p. 77) became an incredibly important one for me in this process. Although Edmodo does not require the students to have an email account, because of some of the end goals that I have for our use of technology this year, I wanted the students to all have school district accounts setup and running before enrolling them in our Edmodo class. One of the long term benefits of this is that if (or when, with this age group) the students forget their password, a simple click on the ‘Forgot password?’ feature will send a password reset email to their account and remedy a potentially troublesome dilemma. This also allows the students to solve their own problem without even needing to let me know about the forgotten password. No changes in organization were needed for me to get this initiative started; the student account setup service is automatically offered by the district, however due to some issues that the district is currently having with their Outlook interface, it took two weeks longer to get my entire class set up and ready to go than I had originally planned for. For this reason, I have only been using Edmodo with my students for a little under a week.

Despite the short amount of time that we have been using this web tool, I am already certain that I made the right choice in moving forward with it. The students are thrilled to be interacting in our ‘digital classroom’ and are actively using the site outside of class time to contribute to discussions, post queries and complete the various assignments and survey tasks that I have set up for them. One of our surveys asks the students to share their feelings about Edmodo so far and the current survey status is that 100% of the students feel that it is awesome! One of the best things that I have noticed so far is that some of my students that are not comfortable putting their hand up to share in the classroom environment have been actively participating online throughout the week. This is exactly what I hoped would happen. I am a bit worried that the novelty for some students may wear off fairly quickly, but I believe that I will have a core group of students that choose to use it regularly and I will be incorporating it into our classroom as tool for assessment and as a means of providing direct feedback to the students in the form of marks, emoticon reactions and anecdotal comments.

According to Anderson, the establishment of an effective online educational environment is threefold. The three critical components are ‘cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence’ (Anderson, 2008, p. 343). Taking care to ensure that all three of these elements are present in both my physical classroom and also within our online learning space, I believe will be incredibly advantageous for both myself and my learners. Because this learning endeavour is so new, I am still modeling the appropriate use of this learning tool with my students by posting videos, links and discussion topics that relate to things that we are doing in class. My hope is that I will generate less and less content myself, as the students become more confident using the site’s affordances and taking risks in their learning. I already have a few students that have started their own topics of discussion and have generated quite a bit of activity. I am working toward balancing my role in Edmodo as facilitator, supporter, and content generator. I plan to continue to be quite involved in the discourse, as it will also help me build up my rapport with students for our face-to-face setting as well. Part of what I am loving about Edmodo thus far is the capacity that it has to ‘support many different forms of interaction, allow[s] for negotiation of content and activity, and corresponding increase in autonomy and control’ (Anderson, 2003, p. 346). I am also thrilled with the potential that this tool holds for me in regard to how it will enable me to quickly, and in some cases automatically, provide students with speedy and direct feedback as to how they have done on a task. It will also allow me to distribute files and assignments to the students in one collaborative learning space, rather than doing so by hand or by email. In a survey that I conducted prior to launching Edmodo, the student feedback that I received indicated that the vast majority of the class felt that they would participate more in class discussions by posting their thoughts in Edmodo in comparison to what they feel comfortable sharing face-to-face in class. This new endeavour is in its earliest stages. Based on my initial experiences with it, I think that I made an informed decision that will be a great asset to my classroom practices for the remainder of the school year, and possibly for the future as well if the advantages end up being as numerous as I am anticipating them being. There are a number of other technology related initiatives that I hope to launch this school year as well, as we have recently had the funding approved to purchase a half class set of iPads. My school has also recently been selected to pilot a district project that will allow us to take digital field trips from our computer lab/studio. The equipment that allows us to take these virtual field trips will also allow us to work on film projects including the use of a green screen.

As I intend to continue my lifelong learning beyond my MET experiences, I have also recently put my name forward to join a district level committee looking at the way in which we will be shifting our school libraries into more of a learning commons approach. My professional future is looking very exciting. I am keen to get started on my next two courses in January and continue to improve my skills and overall knowledge to incorporate technology into my classroom and by doing so, enhance my students’ educational experiences.

References:
Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an online learning context. In Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Bates A. W. & Poole, G. (2003). A framework for selecting and using technology. In A.W. Bates & G. Poole, Effective teaching with technology in higher education (pp. 75-108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.