Assignment #1- Flight Path
ETEC 565A-64A: Special Course in Subject Matter Field
Personal Background
I am an Elementary teacher with experience working in Canada and overseas. The last eight years I was teaching at in International School in Singapore following the International Baccalaureate (PYP) Primary Years Programme. I have just moved back to Canada and have taken on a new role as the K-5 PYP Curriculum Coordinator and Teacher Librarian at a small independent school.
I am working with teachers, students and parents within the school community in overlapping resource areas; PYP curriculum, Library resources and Educational Technology. I am excited to be developing teaching and learning opportunities for my new school community which as a PYP Candidate School, is in the process of implementing the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program. The PYP curriculum “represents an approach to teaching that is broad and inclusive, in that it provides a context within which a wide variety of teaching strategies and styles can be accommodated, provided that they are driven by a spirit of inquiry and clear sense of purpose.” (Making the PYP Happen, 2009, p. 66)
Goals for this Course
My goals for this course are to learn more about using, implementing and communicating through different educational technology tools. This ties in well with my goals in my new position to support teachers in planning and implementing curriculum through Learning Commons resources. I plan to use technology as a means to communicate and collaborate with the school community in effective ways as well as sharing educational technology resources and different ways to use technology in teaching and learning.
PYP practices involve the three dimensions of planning, teaching and assessing. I think the Community of Inquiry model that I learned about in my MET course 565G is an important communication medium incorporating social, cognitive and teacher presence which I will try to keep in mind when considering which technology tools to use and how I will use them.
Learning Management Systems
I want to learn more about how to set up an effective Learning Management System in order to develop an online collaborative space to share educational resources, successful inquiry lessons and a discussion forum while further developing collaborative planning. I enjoy using Google apps for education (http://www.google.com.sg/edu/apps/) and want to learn more about how to set up and learn how to use Google Classroom which I feel has the potential for more interactivity for sharing resources. I am in charge of setting up Library and Educational technology resources which is linked through our Learning Commons Website and powered by Google. I would like to learn how to effectively set up our Moodle Site in a collaborative interactive way for our class assignment and then transfer this information over to my school website.I plan to explore different Learning Management Systems and be in contact with other teacher librarians through the Google+ community.
Assessment
For one of our course assignments we are asked to set up a complete exam or quiz. This is an area I am still reflecting on as there are so many different types of formative assessments that can be done with students that go beyond the multiple choice quiz or short answer questions. I am thinking that this may be an area that I focus on literacy questions for students. I want to learn more about the possibilities of how to include more open- ended formative assessment tasks onto a site like Moodle.
Social Software
The role of the library has shifted dramatically and I am interested in teaching and learning how different social software such as blogs can be used to share information and the use of RSS feeds to highlight new books. I also want to explore how students can share book reviews using social software.
Multimedia
I think that producing a digital story will prove to be challenging but I am aware that the additional layers using multimedia are able to produce a much richer learning experience. My plan is to videotape still images and videos of the “PYP in action” showing students learning in collaborative ways and reflecting on their learning through interviews.
Resources
The following links from the 565A E-learning toolkit will be helpful resources.
http://wiki.ubc.ca/Course:ETEC565/Elearning_Toolkit
http://wiki.ubc.ca/Learning_Management_System
http://wiki.ubc.ca/Web_design_and_HTML_authoring
http://wiki.ubc.ca/Still_images
References
Making the PYP Happen: A curriculum framework for International Primary Education, International Baccalaureate Organization. 2009. United Kingdom; Peterson Press.
Perkins, M., & Pfaffman, J. (2006). Using a course management system to improve classroom communication. Science Teacher, 73(7), 33-37. Retrieved from http://2010082
Secker, Jane. (2008). Social software, libraries and distance learners: literature review. University of London. Retrieved fromhttp://eprints.lse.ac.uk/4058/