{"id":15,"date":"2012-01-19T11:20:33","date_gmt":"2012-01-19T18:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/vrobertsetec565a\/?page_id=15"},"modified":"2012-04-01T20:58:02","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T03:58:02","slug":"synthesis","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/vrobertsetec565a\/synthesis\/","title":{"rendered":"Synthesis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cFEarBzelBs\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Flight Path- Reflection on what it really \u201clooked like\u201d:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cI chose a pig flying as my first brainstorming image, rather than an airplane or a bird flying a specific flight path, because I often feel overwhelmed by the technology choices and I am skeptical of the best approaches.&#8221; (Roberts, 2012 -FlightPath) This term I learned to \u201cfocus\u201d on priorities using the Bates and Poole SECTIONS model. I thought that I was already using the SECTIONS ideas while designing the new online teaching model to teach ESL online. I learned that it isn\u2019t just about \u201cone\u201d technology tool, it is about loking at all the tools you are using from a \u201csystems\u201d approach. I needed to focus on the foundations of my model, building a digital learning enviornment, commuincation among the stakeholders and choosing tools that meet these priorities. Once I had created the foundation for my EdTech model, I was able to clearly look for Technology tools that met the needs of the program. I no longer felt like I was a pig wanting to fly, I now feel more like an bird with a clear flight plan. Of course, I also realize that my personality prefers being the pig and not being an bird. I do well in chaos, so I am finding it extremely difficult to sit back and \u201cwatch\u201d to see how things go. I always want to change things. As a result, I tried to start working on an Elementary program as well this term. I am lucky enough to have people around me that give me contructive feedack. An elementary program is in the works for September 2012 and not immediately a priority. My priorities became The ESL program and updating Psych 11.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Psychology 11 &#8211; Although I planned to recreate the whole psychology 11 online course, I soon learned that it has been best to redesign as we go along through each unit. While I imagined a cutting edge problem based learning project centered course, I was starting with learners who were 1) from China and b) had never taken an online course before. \u00a0There was a lot of resistance to \u201cweb 2.0 tools\u201d and the students felt more comfortable with content and reading. So while I may not have wanted to use an online textbook, the students seemed to need it as a crutch in their transition from f2f into online courses. Maybe their next course can offer a blend of project based activites and content based activities. Like everything in technology, I need to consider a \u201ccontinuum\u201d and how each new skill is supported, practiced, then extended. Too much too soon overwhelms students, regardless of the fact that they are defined as \u201cDigital Natives\u201d .<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">A bonus of learning html and having to develop html pages for my Moodle course, is that I can now figure out the html issues in the psychology course. I am able to play with the design and formatting of the course pages in \u201cSea Monkey\u201d based on html . As I result of starting from the beginning with html, and developing an uderstanding of \u201chow\u201d the pages were originally created, I can make changes at a much faster pace. \u00a0I deeply appreciate the fact that we were expected to create html pages, not that I \u201cliked\u201d it, because I can now help \u201ctech up\u201d some of our \u201colder\u201d online courses at a much faster rate.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">While I did not create a project for all of our classes, I did learn a lot about the different teaching philiosophies offered by the teachers. Just like in a regular High School, the ESL department works differently from the Business Education department and on and on. We have only had two staff group Elluminate sessions, but they were to go over contracts and invoices, not to discuss our teaching and learning as professionals. The project for all the classes is a great goal for next year, when we have a few more seasoned teachers. Right now, as a leader, I still need to infuse the belifes and values that will make \u201cour way\u201d of online education different from the status quo. I also need to develop the learning community for all of our team- including the teachers.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Two things I did not include to my flight plan, but became projects, were to complete a Marketing plan and campaign for GloablEd.ca, including brochures, ppt\u2019s , update the website and videos and writing a chapter for the Classroom 2.0 \u201cEdTech\u201d Online book project. At the beginning of this course, I researched Intellectual Property Rights for Educational Technology Online Teaching Models. While it does exist, I learned that in order to create precedence, I needed to publish our model as our &#8220;own&#8221; so people could \u201crefer\u201d to it. I will never make a million dollars off of \u201cTAL- Technology Assisted Learning\u201d, but I \u00a0might be looked at as one of people who challenged the views traditional online pedagogy and could be a consultant. As such, I created an outline and model for any teacher to follow, I developed a full Marketing Plan based on TAL and what makes GlobalEd different, I wrote \u201cHow to be a 21st Century Teacher\u201d as a chapter that will hopefully make it into the Classroom 2.0 online Book project and then I decided to create the ETEC 565A LMS course based on the model, from a pedagogical perspective. In my chapter, I claim that to become a 21 st Century Teacher (or Learner) that you have to share and collaborate. It was extemely diffcult for me to \u201cshare\u201d my ideas, but if I choose to keep them to myself, the model will not improve.\u00a0 Ironically, that is the antithesis of \u201c21st Century Teaching\u201d- stagnation&#8230;.. As a teacher, I have to keep changing my ideas and being open to \u201cnew ways\u201d of doing things. Like John mentioned in his final discussion post, the discussions and collaboration among all the learners is the biggest piece of learning. The Digital Story telling was a good example &#8211; when I saw what others were producing, I pushed myself to take the module\u2019s theme of \u201cremixing\u201d instride, and I made something uniquly my own. It helped that John knew how much time it really took me to complete the project, as my parents and husband just said, \u201cThat\u2019s nice, but your edges are off\u201d. \u00a0As a result, I may not have completed the \u201cgroup project\u201d that I considered at first, instead, I was able to focus on our \u201cmodel\u201d and start to make key strategic marketing moves that could help expand our sales- that included collboration. The best learning was, that I really believe in what I am doing and it is not \u201cjust\u201d about the sales, but about \u201cEducational change\u201d, which is pretty neat.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>eLearning toolkit experience<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">This was the weakest area for me in ETEC 565A. Although I used the eLearning toolkit to refer to when I needed to for ETEC 565A discussions, I tended to use it as a just a resource for my learning. I did go through the entire Toolkit, but I did not complete all the blog reflection activities. I had already \u201cplayed\u201d with many of the tools presented, so I used it more as a quick links section. The section that I spent the most time in was the \u201caudio visual\u201d section. I now know how to make podcasts in a two different ways, audacity and audioboo, and I am working on my filming for our \u201cFlipped Classroom videos\u201d. I became a fan of snagit, but I enjoy using jing because Camtasia confuses me. I have also accepted that most of the audiovisal \u201ctricks\u201d can be done direclty on a Mac, and as usual, I have had to come up with a few different web 2.0 tools to \u201cmake magic\u201d on my PC. I believe that audiovisual tools work a lot better using a Mac than a PC. \u00a0I appreciated the complexity of the eLearning toolkit, but I am the type of person who searches on my own anyway. The eToolkit acted as the flame that finally ignited my motivation to create the web 2.0 tools based products I always \u201cread\u201d about, but never completed myself. Now I know that I can do anything, if I try.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>ETEC565A Experience<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Timing is everything and the best thing about this course for me, has been how it directly related to projects that I was expected to complete with my work as CEO of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.globaled.ca.\/\">www.GlobalEd.ca.<\/a> As a result of the specific discussions and eLearning toolkit I was able to develop my design skills and actually create web 2.0 tool based products. The flight plan gave me a specific \u201cartifact\u201d to look back upon and reflect about how much work that I have done over the last 3 months. If I compare myself to where I was when I first started with my company (I joined in March 2011) to today, I seem like a different person. John\u2019s feedback about me taking on too much \u00a0in my flight plan were very realistic, but starting a new company and trying to influence educational change is a lot of work. I appreciated the honesty of my instructor, and I find it hard to believe that even as an adult I craved his positive feedback (that has not happened in any other course as of yet). I really appreciated the discussions, and altough we did not complete a \u201chuge\u201d group assignment, I have been steadily working with a group of my peers throughout the course. Again this is something that did not happen in my other courses. We formed a \u201cstudy group\u201d quite by accident, but I think it was based on our perceptions of the involvement of the students in the course. The group consists of people with a wide range of abilities, so it proves to me that if you demonstrate effort, you will always be rewarded. My peers helped me with html (Peggy is a saint), the digitial storytelling and excellent replies and feedback to our discussion posts. Again, I have never written so much in one course in discussion post s- to date. My participation was high because I was engaged and excited about each new topic. I know that it is because that is what I am doing in my work as well, but I appreciated the wide variety of activities: discussions (reflection), proposal (administration), LMS design (support and strength for our work teams) as well as the analysis of web 2.0 tools and options. I really appreciated the readings as they were appropriate and not too research based. This course was all about learning by doing, a great example for me to follow in my own course deisgn.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Next Steps in Educational Technology (engaging as lifelong learner)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>From purely a skills point of view, my next steps in Educational Technology are to familiarize myself with html even more and update our Moodle courses step by step. I am also going to encourage more teaching training in Moodle design development. I will also strive to try and play with more web 2.0 stools in order to have some \u201cfun\u201d but also to keep my mind challenged. In particular, I need to work on techsmith\u2019s snagit and Camtasia.<\/p>\n<p>I entered the MET program as a stay at home mom who wanted to learn more about technoloy and help her kids at home. I can now create blogs for my school parent council <a href=\"http:\/\/secondlanguageparent.wordpress.com\/\">http:\/\/secondlanguageparent.wordpress.com\/<\/a> and for my son\u2019s beaver group (in progress), but I can also lead teams of teachers to create cutting edge online teaching models and create proposals for Blended Learning programs throughout China. \u00a0I originally chose the Certificate program because I already have a MA in Leadership and Traning\u00a0 through RRU, and I did not enjoy the online portion of my previous MA. I was hired as a administrative support for GlobalEd last year. As the company has grown, so has my experience in Educational Technology. \u00a0I was recently accepted into the full MET program and will now hopefully complete my MET over 3 years. \u00a0The best thing about this course for me, has been how it directly related to projects that I was expected to complete with my work as CEO of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.globaled.ca.\/\">www.GlobalEd.ca.<\/a> I will always be a lifelong learner, it is just who I am, but I am excited to take the next steps with my company and as an Educational Technology Consultant. As previously mentioned, I wrote a chapter for Classroom 2.0 which I hope will be published, but I am also hoping to speak at some conferences about what we are doing. The first online conference that I will be speaking at is in April 21, 2012 , the Social Learning Summit with Classroom 2.0. In the last three months I have also spoken with the Calgary Board of Education, multiple asian market education agents and other online schools in BC. I see the potential for change and growth and I plan on being there every step of the way. The only way to fail, is not to be open to lifelong learning. Since I will always be a learner, I know that I will achieve something, although not necessarily what I expected. My immediate next steps are to take the four core Educational Technology courses in order to complete the \u201cFoundation\u201d of my new Masters degree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flight Path- Reflection on what it really \u201clooked like\u201d: \u201cI chose a pig flying as my first brainstorming image, rather than an airplane or a bird flying a specific flight path, because I often feel overwhelmed by the technology choices and I am skeptical of the best approaches.&#8221; (Roberts, 2012 -FlightPath) This term I learned [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8500,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-15","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/vrobertsetec565a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/vrobertsetec565a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/vrobertsetec565a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/vrobertsetec565a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8500"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/vrobertsetec565a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/vrobertsetec565a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/vrobertsetec565a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15\/revisions\/84"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/vrobertsetec565a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}