This is a proposal for the course that I will be creating while taking ETEC 565 at the University of British Columbia. The course title is Teachers With Technology (TWT).

Overview:
Teachers, especially those who are interested in educational technology, spend a lot of time talking about which Learning Management System (LMS) is the best. But the similarities between various LMS systems are greater than the differences (Black, Beck, Dawson, Jinks, DiPietro 2007) … and the real need, in my opinion, is for teachers in general to have a higher level of technological skill and awareness of how various technologies can be harnessed for educational purposes. As Lei (2009) argues, even “digital native” teachers who understand and use technology extensively often do not connect their use of social and “web 2.0” tools to educational opportunities.

If it’s truly the case that even the digital natives struggle with adapting new web technologies to teaching and learning … how must the digital immigrant teachers be doing? One would imagine much worse.

So the need exists for simple, effective, targeted information that will help teachers be aware of and understand new digital technologies, and then be able to successfully judge when and where to apply them.

Details

• Target:
  K-12 educators in urban North America

• Purpose:
  Help teachers learn the basics of educational technology so they can confidently apply it in their own classes

• Topics:
  • Information & knowledge sources
    – Sources (e.g. Wikipedia)
    – Searches (e.g., Google, real-time search engines)
    – Auto-discovery (saved searches, RSS)
    – Communal wisdom (del.icio.us, digg, etc.)

  • Creation & Publishing fora & tools
    – text
    – video
    – audio

  • Collaboration tools
    – structured
    – unstructured
    – synchronous
    – asynchronous

  • Communication tools
    – One to many
    – Many to many

  • Structured learning experiences
    – Learning Management Systems
    – Wikis
    – Other
• Production:
  This will initially be an individual effort on my part, but will consciously transition to crowdsourcing to get other educators involved in helping create an general primer.

• Delivery:
  Initially, on WebCT Vista, and freely distributable as a SCORM package. Eventually, a version of the course will also be available on a public web-accessible wiki. This version, of course, will lack some of the features (assessment, collaboration) of the LMS version.

• Timeframe:
  Initial set-up will be complete by August 2009, and the project will be public and available for contribution by September 2009.

• Financing:
  The only out-of-pocket costs are web hosting, and I will carry those costs.

• Review and quality assurance:
  Initial review and QA will be done as part of my grade for the ETEC 565 course. As soon as the module is public, it will transition to a crowdsourced quality assurance model. If necessary over time, I will incorporate a Wikipedia-like curating board or foundation.

LMS selected
I’ve selected WebCT Vista as the initial LMS to build this course in. As discussed in the overview, I think the choice of LMS is less relevant than the quality of educational material.

However, I personally selected WebCT Vista for a number of reasons:

1. Personal reasons: I have not used it as an author before (as I have Moodle, extensively) and wanted to try it
2. Large urban districts are fairly likely to have access to WebCT
3. From all accounts and my initial investigation, it is fairly easy to develop a course on (for example, setting up desired features of a WebCT Vista course is simpler than Moodle, which has multiple configuration pages)
4. WebCT Vista supports the SCORM standard, so I can export the course and make it available on other SCORM-compliant systems
5. Finally, WebCT Vista is widely available in universities where teachers are being trained

SECTIONS analysis
Bates and Poole have provided a framework to use in evaluating technologies and their appropriateness to particular educational scenarios (2003), SECTIONS. I’m using this as a scorecard to ensure that WebCT Vista (and eventual publishing to a wiki) will meet the needs of my target audience (K12 North American educators in urban areas).

• Students
  I anticipate that many teachers will have access to WebCT Vista, but many also will not. For the ones that do, they will get the full course experience. For those that do not, they will be able to use the wiki for more self-directed learning experiences.

• Easy of use
  WebCT Vista is fairly easy to use, but has some archaic structures in terms of discussion boards that are not web2.0 friendly and fast, and limited chat abilities. The wiki will be easy to use, but light on features.

• Cost structure
  WebCT Vista is expensive, but there is no incremental cost it is already in place, as I intended to make the course available for free. And, naturally, the wiki is completely free.

• Teaching and learning
  LMS technology provides the ability for people to learn in may different styles, if sufficiently diverse materials have been created. But it’s not easy or cheap to create rich media content, and LMS technologies cannot easily address the needs of those who learn better in real-time face-to-face encounters. So there are some limitations here.

• Interactivity
  WebCT Vista does provide some options for interactivity, but it may not always be easy for a course designer to employ them. The Wiki, on the other hand, will encourage a fluidity between learning and teacher roles, and that will foster interactivity in spite of the very real limitations of wiki technology.

• Organization
  As an open and freely available resource, organization will need to be an emergent quality of a community of contributors who help to develop this material. It will not necessarily be supported by any particular school district or organization.

• Novelty
  It will be challenging, again, to develop a great deal of rich media content, which will impact the level of novelty.

• Speed
  This course will be fairly quick to create, drawing heavily on existing resources rather than reinventing the wheel.

Bibliography

Bates, A.W. and Poole, G. (2003) Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Black, E.; Beck, D.; Dawson, K.; Jinks, S.; DiPietro, M. (2007). The Other Side of the LMS: Considering Implementation and Use in the Adoption of an LMS in Online and Blended Learning Environments. TechTrends: Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning. 51, 35-39.

Lie, J. (2009). Digital Natives as Preservice Teachers: What Technology Preparation Is Needed? Jounal of Computing in Teacher Education. 25 n 3, 87-89.