Kevin Wilnechenko’s ETEC 565A Synthesis Reflection

 

Introduction

As ETEC 565A winds down I am trying to think back to how I was before this course. There is no doubt that I have changed as a teacher – at least I feel I have. I feel as though I have gained much knowledge and I have a new energy that I can unleash in my future classes. The following is a synthesis for my ETEC 565A e-portfolio.

 

Précis of my Flight Path

In week two of ETEC 565A I wrote my flight path for this course and thought carefully about what I wanted to get out of this course. My goals were broad and I painted my hopes with very wide brush strokes, but my learning filled in the picture with many small and detailed etches. I had hoped that ETEC 565A would help me move toward a more blended approach to teaching and I believe that this mission was a success. My main goal all along was to get right into Moodle, and get into Moodle I did. I was able to explore Moodle early on and familiarize myself with its many features. I got a sense of how to navigate around and through it as well as approach it from the point of view of a course creator. In my flight path I expressed a desire to become proficient with online quizzes, asynchronous/synchronous forums, and interactive modules. I am pleasantly surprised with how my Moodle course turned out and how the aforementioned features played a large part in its creation. I had also hoped to find ways to strategically embed engaging videos into Moodle to enhance the learning experience. This was achieved as well.

 

Another goal in my flight path was to understand the intricacies of creating of a learning management system (LMS). How does one go about choosing an appropriate LMS and begin building a course? One must ask themselves if the technologies that are used promote good practices in the learning process (Chickering & Gamson, 1987). I new that ETEC 565A would go beyond Moodle itself and dive into this issue of course preparation. In this regard, the writing of Bates and Poole (2003) was consulted many times and their SECTIONS framework proved to be very valuable. I also appreciated the examples of poor web sites that gave me ideas of what not to do in my Moodle course. When creating a web site sometimes less is more; keeping things simple is the best route to take (Panettieri, 2007).

 

eLearning Toolkit

In ETEC 565A we were to complete various eLearning toolkit activities. I found these to be very effective and I appreciated that we could decide which toolkit to complete. This freedom allowed me to determine where I would spend my time. Not being bound by a predetermined schedule allowed me to control some aspect of my learning. In total I posted eight toolkit entries into my e-portfolio with topics on Moodle, weblogs, Wimba, Amaya, wikis, synchronous/asnchronous communication, mLearning, web design, and HTML.

 

Not surprisingly I began by investigating Moolde, but not long after that I looked into weblogs because one of the first tasks was to create an e-portfolio. I wanted to do a better job on this e-portfolio than others that I have created. I discovered how to organize my entries within categories. These categories allow users to select the eLearning category and view all of eight of them, or they can select any one of the modules 1 through 5 to view what entries I created during that time. I feel that these categories give my e-portfolio the kind of ease-of-use that Bates and Poole (2003) speak of.

 

Since collaboration was encouraged, I followed the e-portfolios of other students. I was delighted to have discovered RSS feeds for the first time. I loved having new entries by others find their way to me instead of the other way around. Another new and exciting tool for me was HTML. I had never used HTML before and this course forced me to take a hard look at it. The toolkit provided me with a great introduction to this world. As a result of this eLearning toolkit I feel that I have refined my teaching practice in terms of the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS), which contains standards and descriptors for teachers as they make their classrooms more digital.

 

My Overall ETEC565 Experience

Having recently completed the four core courses in the MET program, my anticipation in taking ETEC 565A was high. I had heard wonderful things about it from colleagues and I was looking forward to the practical aspect of it. I was pleased to see some familiar authors, such as Anderson, Bates, Poole, Chickering, and Gamson who’s work I had looked at in other courses. However, in the case of Bates and Pooles (2003) SECTIONS framework, I had never really understood its application until this course. It was nice to have the opportunity to consider Anderson’s (2008) learner-centred, knowledge-centred, assessment-centred, and community-centred lenses as I developed my Moodle site. It was important to try to find a nice balance of each one.

 

Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) seven principles also helped guide me in the creation of my Moodle site. The principles that spoke the most to me were to encourage contact between students and faculty as well as to develop reciprocity and cooperation among students. I wanted to have the Moodle site bring my class closer together by using asynchronous communication, which I suspect might create even more discussion than in a face-to-face class. I look forward to seeing if this is the case.

 

The digital storytelling experience was a bitter sweet one for me. I thoroughly loved seeing the variety that is out there and Levine’s (2010) “50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story” exposed me to so many web 2.0 applications that I know I will be visiting time and time again. Creating a story was very time consuming and this was frustrating for me. However, seeing a well-done product makes it all worthwhile. The notion of underestimated time carried on to the creation of my Moodle site, and once again the pleasure of seeing my finished creation outweighed the pain in birthing it. Although Moodle is not difficult to use, there were some elements that posed a challenge for me. Perhaps the biggest challenge was the selective release component of one of my modules. I managed to create a fairly effective selective release using a Moodle lesson as well as a less intricate method where I will manually make the module invisible to the class until the right time.

 

I felt that the case studies that we were to respond to throughout the course were useful. It was good to know that these were based on real life stories as it actually piqued my interest and caused me to take the scenarios more seriously. I responded to each case study but found that my point of view was quite limited. It wasn’t until I read the other student responses that I began to get a clearer picture of the issues and solutions.

 

My Next Steps

I see myself as a life-long learner and the MET program has helped me scratch the itch that I have had for some time now. Once ETEC 565A is finished and my three credits are in the books I hope to continue with my last MET course. ETEC 590 should be a great course where I can pull together all that I have learned in this journey. In terms of teaching, I am excited to use what I have learned in ETEC 565A and apply it to my classes as a blended approach to teaching. This has been the most practical courses that I have taken. I appreciate how it has exposed me to Moodle and other LMS, as well as many web 2.0 applications that I will be sure to share with my colleagues and students. Perhaps when my masters is completed I will share my new found knowledge with my colleagues during a professional development day. Moodle would be a great topic and I feel that I have the basic know-how to present the first steps needed to get the ball rolling.

 

More immediately, I would like to backup and switch my UBC Moodle site to my SD33 Moodle server. SD33 has just given me my own location for a Moodle course and the timing couldn’t have been better. I may, however, need to tweak certain things so that it is ready for September. Since there is now a Moodle server in my district, my choice to use it satisfies the C-Costs, O-Organizatonal and E-Ease of Use criteria from the SECTIONS framework (Bates & Poole, 2003).

 

One more piece of technology that I would like to incorporate into my class is a wiki. Every year I assign a project for my physics students where they must do a report on the life of a famous physicist. I usually receive poster boards or PowerPoints from the students, and these get lost over time. The benefit of using a wiki is that students could build on projects from past years and they could be involved in the creation process as a whole class. ETEC 565A’s wiki activity helped me come up with this idea and see the potential of wikis. If my students took this a step further and placed mashups within their projects, there would be even more learning taking place. Lamb (2007) states that “when remixing happens in a social context on the open web, people learn from each other’s process.”

 

Conclusion

 

ETEC 565A is a course I have taken that is like no other. The practical nature of it is something that I’m sure every student is appreciative of. It has made me more aware of the technologies that are available and given me the tools to know how to chose the ones that are more appropriate for my situation. My knowledge of Moodle and other LMS has grown tremendously. ETEC 565A has equipped me with the skills necessary to begin an online course, as well as provided me with a number of great resources. The proof of how much I can apply in a blended environment will be seen in my classes, where the rubber hits the road. ETEC 565A has also given me a number of valuable relationships that have grown in this online environment.

 

References

 

Anderson, T. (2008).  Towards a Theory of Online Learning.  In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and Practice of Online Lerning.  Edmonton AB:  Athabasca University. Accessed online 29 July 2011 http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008_Anderson-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.

 

Boyes, J., Dowie, S., & Rumzan, I. (2005).  Using the SECTIONS framework to evaluate flash media.  Innovate Journal of Online Education, 2(1).  Retrieved from:
http://www.innovateonline.info/pdf/vol2_issue1/Using_the_SECTIONS_Framework_to_Evaluate_Flash_Media.pdf

 

Chickering, A.W. & Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), 3-7. Accessed online 29 July 2011 
http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm

 

Chickering , A.W. & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996).  Implementing the seven principles:  Technology as lever.  American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6.  Accessed online 29 July 2011 http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples.htm

 

Lamb, B. (2007). Dr. Mashup; or, Why Educators Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Remix. EDUCAUSE Review, 42(4, July/August), 12–25.  Accessed online 30 July 2011. http://www.educause.edu/ER/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume42/DrMashuporWhyEducatorsShouldLe/161747

 

Levine, A. (2010). 50+ 2.0 Ways to Tell A Story.  Accessed online July 29 2011 http://50ways.wikispaces.com/

 

National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers
http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_for_Teachers_2008.htm

 

Panettieri, J. (2007). Addition by subtraction. University Business, August, 58-62. Accessed online 30 July 2011. http://www.universitybusiness.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=845

 

Web Pages That Suck. What We Clicked: Web Design Mistakes Sorted. Accessed online July 29, 2011. Retrieved from http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/does-my-web-site-suck/what-we-clicked-on-checklist-one.html