Starting another journey

Category: TIEgrad (Page 2 of 4)

Making

Photo by Mark Fletcher-Brown on Unsplash

What?

This week, we discussed MakerSpaces, starting with Resnick’s (2007) research into how children learn. Dr. Sandra Becker based her dissertation on exploring the possibilities of making use of MakerSpaces in current middle school classes. Before we listened to Becker and Jacobsen during class, I listened to an Education Canada Live podcast where Becker discussed her research. Becker and Jacobsen based their use of makerspaces in three different subjects in Jacobsen’s class in the 2018-2019 school year. Student enjoyment and deeper understanding of subject materials were the results. The Reggio Emilia approach is also based in the philosophy that students are capable learners and can create and teach themselves and is one big makerspace in an atelier.

 

So What?

Image from Hidden Figures, copyright 20th Century Fox

Making is a wonderful tool to engage students. When I taught design, we were always making something – that was the goal. In arts classes, you are making art or music and creating together. In high school math, not so much. Yet the idea of thinking creatively and as well as critically is EXTREMELY important in math! All those theories and rules that students are supposed to know and use, well, they were all ‘made’ at some point in time in the past! Seeing (or reading) Hidden Figures really was eye-opening for my middle school students in more than one way, but for my math classroom, the most important point was that the computers were looking at the math and trying to combine it in ways that had not been done yet!

The International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP) has 4 criteria/rubrics for each subject (found here under subject briefs) against which you can assess tasks. Criterion B in Mathematics is Investigating Patterns. The task needs to be designed so students explore patterns with numbers and, at a Grade 9 or 10 level, can generalize a rule using algebra. So instead of memorizing something like the steps in how to factorize a trinomial (for example x2-5x+6) into two binomials (and the answer is (x-3)(x-2)), they actually work through and try find it themselves. Before becoming an IB teacher, it took me three classes to get students to memorize the pattern of how to factorize a trinomial, but after students take one class to try investigate the pattern themselves (successfully or unsuccessfully), it only takes ÂŒ of a second class for them to internalize the steps. The excitement of those that ‘make’ the formula in the first class and the realization of the rest that they were so close to ‘making’ the formula changes attitudes towards mathematics. Of course, it is difficult to start ‘making’ with this Grade 9 level concept. Luckily, most of the students have been ‘making’ mathematical pattern rules since elementary school and those new to the school buy in to the excitement after a few experiences.

Not To FOIL MYP Criterion B Investigation for MYP 4 (Grade 9)

Designing these types of tasks takes time and experimentation. Because of their experience, our students knew that some of the tasks we were using as formative assessment were in development stage and they were very interested in collaborating to make the task more accessible without compromising the rigour. They enjoyed this engagement in making, but were leery of it as summative assessment because of the limited time given – if you didn’t have the creative ideas fast enough, you might not complete the assessment. With this strong engagement evident even in a high school level, I think makerspaces is not a fad in education but a tool that helps us develop skills in our students. I recently consulted with a Reggio Emilio school in San Francisco who were extending the Reggio philosophy into their middle school and hopefully up into a senior school, using the IB MYP as a framework as it fit well.

 

Now What?

As teachers, it is important to realize we are not teaching subjects, but we are teaching students. We are not teaching mathematics, sciences, language arts, design or arts – – we are teaching mathematicians, scientists, readers, writers, designers, artists, musicians . . . . Finding ways to ‘make’ that suit your subject is a way of encouraging authentic experiences in the subject matter we want students to explore.

 

Resources

Becker, S. (May, 2019). “Make to Learn: Can makerspaces be more than a fad in education?” EdCan Network. Retrieved from : https://www.edcan.ca/articles/make-to-learn/

Becker, S., & Jacobsen, M. (2019). “How Can I Build a Model if I Don’t Know the Answer to the Question?”: Developing Student and Teacher Sky Scientist Ontologies Through Making. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 17(Supplement 1), 31-48.

Education Canada Live podcast featuring Dr. Sandra Becker

Newitz, A. (January, 2017). “Hidden Figures is the perfect space race movie”. ArsTechnica. Retrieved from https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/hidden-figures-is-the-perfect-space-race-movie/

Resnick, M. (2007). All I really need to know (about creative thinking) I learned (by studying how children learn) in kindergarten. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & Cognition (pp. 1–6). New York, NY, USA: ACM. http://dor.org/10.1145/1254960.1254961 

Reflective Framework: What? So What? Now What?:  Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001). Critical Reflection in Nursing and the Helping Professions: a User’s Guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Social Distancing

This thread helped me recognize something about myself. When the crap hits the fan, I go into ‘hyperspeedproductivity’ to deal with the fallout and the causes. In my school administration job, I would hopefully have anticipated the situation through creative planning. This is probably why I was encouraged to take the type of administration position I had, even though I never had any intention of ever becoming an administrator. I recognize that I am not normal in my reaction to unexpected situations, but I believe I developed this because of being involved in the arts and starting to teach piano and singing lessons at age 14. You never knew what was going to happen when performing and it all had to come out smelling like roses in the end. And at the end of two weeks of social distancing and ten days after the announcement that schools would close, I hit the crash.

So, recap.

What did I do when we were told to hunker down and social distance and I have no school classes to prepare for? I signed up for two other courses to support my final MedTech project development. One is a Google Educator Level 1 Certification because a friend is offering it for free with her support when needed. It may be the answer to how I can host my final project without it being a cost to me monetarily (though I am still a little concerned about the privacy). The other one is on Indigenous histories and contemporary issues in Canada from an indigenous perspective.

These choices help with escapism from the Coronavirus news, have an indoor focus since I can’t spend much time outside with this being my prime allergy season therefore tricky for my asthma (and my inhaler appears to be in short supply so I was caught short for a week), and they are something positive to do when I need to back off from the social/physical distancing math inquiry project I am creating for this course and my final project.

It is timely that we were required to read Buchanan’s “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking”.  Unfortunately, I think my inquiry project is a wicked problem; the real-life component doesn’t really have a solution as the data may not be accurate due to a number of considerations and we still do not have a full understanding of the coronavirus that is requiring the social/physical distancing. Plus, new models and data is being released daily. Maybe that will make the final guided inquiry problem interesting for students to consider after they look at the basic math they need to apply. Hopefully, because it is wicked, it will also be a lasting and useful math exercise.

I attempted to organize the inquiry as a controlled investigation with opportunities to reflect on the real-life applications through research and information literacy. (Levels of inquiry referred to match Trevor Mackenzie’s Levels of inquiry.) My hope is that students will then move on to guided inquiry within the topic, showing their ability to be creative. There is so much math that can be explored through this lens, including using digital citizenship skills by debunking the profuse fake news that uses inaccurate math or displays it poorly. I also included a link to Hans Rosling’s Ted Talk on statistics as inspiration for innovation in showing the math they discovered.

The designing of the task (above) took way longer than I expected because it kept growing and changing. I have created inquiry tasks before, and reading Galileo’s website resonated, but because I am not creating for a specific class of students, the process took quite long. By trying to be extremely inclusive, it is almost spiraling out of control. As the Galileo website suggests under ‘What is inquiry?’ article, the problem is authentic, has applications well beyond the school, requires the use of digital technologies (and literacies which are outlined) and encourages active exploration and connecting with experts. The open inquiry suggested has academic rigour potential for multiple grade levels, and I have suggested assessment methods for the teachers I sent it to (if they want to use it as assessment). I left out the opportunity to communicate with other students as that will be left up to the teacher. The task is really meant to be used as a jumping off point for an International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme criterion B (Investigating Patterns) assessment after the controlled inquiry section (which would take place under ‘test’ conditions) and then the final guided project would be a criterion C (Communicating) and criterion D (Applying Mathematics in Real-Life Contexts) assessment task. These criteria have three to five strands each which delineate eight levels of achievement.

Then, the crash.

I didn’t want to do ANYTHING but my first marked blog was due. Darn.

Our professor recognized the unique situation we were in and extended the deadline on our blog post (which I had planned to be this one). Therefore, this blog reflects two weeks of ‘work’. I spent a few days doing diddly and then set myself a deadline to share the assignment out (and therefore stop daily ‘improvements’). I got going and finished the Social Distancing Inquiry Task (or as finished as any of these types of inquiries get). In the development of the task, I used EZGif again and Google Draw for the first time. I still want to go in and edit the task, but I am leaving the editing for others so they have some ownership. I am keeping a list of items I may want to add for future times when I will use it.

Plans to convert the task to something anyone could use without having it in a proprietary software like Microsoft Powerpoint or Google Slides didn’t pan out. Supposedly, Slides should open if a student has a Google anything, but if they don’t, Apache OpenOffice Impress should open the slides as an open source freeware option. Even the conversion to Slides lost some of the functionality of Powerpoint, so I still have to check opening the Slides in Impress, but I will leave that for another week. It will be linked to my final project, so at that time, I will ‘license’ it as part of that open educational resource.

For now, please try out the task or pass it on to someone who may want to use/edit it! It works best for the student in presentation mode.

 

Resources:

Apache OpenOffice Impress

Buchanan, R. (1992). Wicked Problems in Design Thinking Design Issues: MIT Press, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Spring, 1992), pp. 5-21, retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/jrankin/www/engin_as_lib_art/Design_thinking.pdf

EZGif

From the Ashes – CBC Canada Reads

Galileo (2019). Designing Learning. Retrieved from https://galileo.org/designing-learning/ (Inquiry and Design Thinking)

Google Educator course into – https://teachercenter.withgoogle.com/fundamentals/course

Google Draw

Indigenous course – https://www.coursera.org/learn/indigenous-canada/home/welcome

Microsoft Powerpoint

Unsuccessful free powerpoint to video converters – https://www.ispringsolutions.com/blog/top-10-powerpoint-to-video-converters

https://elearningindustry.com/turn-your-presentation-into-an-interactive-elearning-course

https://www.zamzar.com/convert/ppt-to-html5/

Fact Checking and Filter Bubbles

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

This week’s goal areas for improving my digital literacies according to the BC Digital Literacy Framework:

4. Digital Citizenship – b. Privacy and Security – understands the security implications of computer networks and client/servers. (Gr. 10-12) AND j. Understanding and Awareness of the Role of ICT in Society – is aware of the general trends within new media even if he/she does not use them. (Gr. 10-12)

Disclaimer: This blog post will have almost nothing to do with the work I did on my course this week, since what I did was a continuation of last week. Instead, I am looking at a behaviour trend and forcing myself to change something about it.

It seems everything I read now or watch on TV, I have this unreasonable need to fact check. If we are watching a science fiction show or a comedy, I can relax, but if we are watching anything based even remotely in real life, I am driving my husband nuts by simultaneously researching on my computer:  triangulating or trying to find a primary source. If I can’t find sufficient sources on my regular google.ca search, I will try duckduckgo.com or switch to an incognito window and try google.com or bing.com.

In researching this blog post, I found this article which states Baidu.com is the most common search engine used in China. I think I will try that out in the next few weeks to see what perspectives it gives, particularly on apps that may be available in China. Yandex.com is popular in Russia, as is Google, so maybe I should try Yandex using my Cyrillic alphabet keyboard and my trusty English/Ukrainian dictionary.

Of all these search engines, DuckDuckGo doesn’t store personal information or follow with ads, so it really is what I should be using, but habits are hard to break. Another one I should consider, from the article, is Ecosia.org. It is based in Berlin, Germany and uses the money from advertising to plant trees around the world! đŸŒ±Similar to DuckDuckGo, it doesn’t store your searches, use tracking tools or sell your data.

Did I check the veracity of this article? Um, yes. 🙄

By searching on Ecosia, I found a number of sites confirming Baidu as the most popular search engine in China. Two were:

Quertime

Dragon Social – which also had background information on China’s Great Firewall. This article references primary information sources.

There were many sites confirming Yandex as a popular Russian search engine, including:

SEO Marketing

Digital Marketing Community

StatCounter – which is a primary source.

I also went to DuckDuckGo’s homepage and it stated “Our privacy policy is simple: we don’t collect or share any of your personal information. Ever.” I also looked at Ecosia’s home page. After that, I switched my preferences in Chrome so I now use Ecosia as my default search engine. We shall see how that affects my searches in the next few weeks compared to my husband who will still be on Google.

BC Digital Literacies

I first made a Loom movie of highlighting the Digital Literacies and then went in and made another movie to talk and add the other two documents. Not the most efficient way, but I wanted to see if I could talk over a video. And it worked, other than I didn’t catch all of my ‘Hi’ at the beginning!

As for our project, this is my outline:

  • Template for a “choose your own adventure” inquiry for learning and as a way to document inquiry. 
  • Use different platforms like a ppt/slides, website, or google forms, or use one of these free platforms (https://www.freetech4teachers.com/2015/01/three-platforms-for-writing-choose-your.html?m=1) or anything else we can find.. 
  • create an example (or examples using different platforms)  for students to work through and document the creation process (possibly through another platform like Adobe Spark)
  • students can use the templates to document inquiry, particularly when they go off track and dead end and then have to come back to a previous point to head off in a new direction. 
  • Teachers can use it to encourage inquiry (in math or another subject area) so students learn HOW to inquire.
  • Hoping to make this scalable for K-12

Accessing Digitally

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

I spent a week without my computer. Originally, it was supposed to be a digital disconnect for at least part of the time, but with the Covid-19 outbreak developing, we spent a fair amount of time reading articles online, which meant I kept a close eye on all emails, Twitter, and my Feedly articles. Therefore, I also tried to do what I could on the limited bandwidth available to continue being part of our online course. I did not expect the frustration level I experienced!

Yes, there are iPhone versions of Google Drive, Docs and Sheets, but they are difficult to manipulate through a tiny phone screen. A slow and intermittent wifi access made it even more irritating. I did get through to the notes Heidi took as well as the link to what was dealt with in class, but I was still unclear about assignment requirements and the details of what was discussed. Would a recording of the class have helped? Would everyone have contributed knowing they were being recorded? Or would a summary made by the instructor have helped? As I was writing this last thought, Dr. Verena Roberts, our instructor, uploaded a short summary — exactly what I was thinking about. (For our second class, she recorded the whole class and I expect that will make the experience better for those that missed. )

These experiences are similar to what our students may have accessing online courses — something that is becoming very real with the Covid-19 school closures and move to online learning. Not all students have access to a computer or even a good wifi signal. Even I, with my techie background knowledge, resilience and confidence wound up having difficulties with self motivation and regulation! By the time I accessed the Powerpoint and it refused to load properly, I just gave up and left it. Adding to the google sheet was a painful experience and I had to undo a number of times because of inadvertent entries or deletes. How can I expect even the most motivated and strong students to succeed if they do not have the correct tools when I am unable to power through the difficulties accessing?

So what did I learn? I go back to what I had to do in my early design/info pro teaching days: make sure every lesson has a backup lowtech plan. Each class or assignment has to be designed as though technology will not work in the moment and there are assorted possible solutions as well as a lowtech option. Phone calls and snail mail may still be the best option for some teacher/student interactions. It is going to mean a lot of extra time for educators in the regular teaching world to connect adequately to their students in the upcoming weeks. Hopefully they have a good relationship with their students so the communication lines stay open.

Digital StoryTelling Experiences

I wanted to try something new and not use a video or audio editing app but one where I could combine pictures and audio. In particular, I was looking for something easy enough for elementary students so that if I asked middle school or high school students to use it, none would find it  challenging. I researched digital storytelling resources and picked one that I have not used. Turned out, it had very limited options unless you paid for it. The next few I found were not even still available. A couple others were only available on an iPad or iPhone and after being a week without my computer, I just did NOT feel up to going there (more on that in another blog). The two best resources were from August, 2018 in Practical EdTech and September, 2018 in Tech & Learning. I decided on the Adobe Spark app and spent a couple of hours planning and creating to make a 2 minute video. Considering I usually spend a few hours writing and editing a blog, it was about what I expected.

(First pic was made possible by a random person who regularly feeds the zebra doves and was inspired by my school’s production of Mary Poppins.)

Online EdCamp – Sorting Out Pieces

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash</p?

I did not really know what I wanted to discuss so I hoped that others would have ideas. Turned out people had really good ideas and there were a few rooms of interest to me: data and privacy, using social media in classrooms, student engagement through blended learning, and building learning communities between remote classrooms using synchronous and asynchronous technology. I attended the last.

We had some sharing of individual experiences of online learning, both synchronous and asynchronous and chatted about our experience with our current program. The two big takeaways for me were that discussing or interacting in some way in a small group is really important to build enough trust to interact, and that a backchannel is valuable to build on this and to incorporate new members into your trusted group. It gave me practical examples of how the C of Communication in learning design that I had been reading about in Conole, Baran and Conole and Brown’s articles could be actually be incorporated into a resource as opposed to a course.

 

So What?

Reflecting on my own experiences in asynchronous online learning and correspondence courses (where there was absolutely no community), I can recognize how implementing small group work and backchannels affected my learning. In the correspondence course, feedback was extremely slow to arrive (yes, back in the day of snail mail). There was no connection at all to other students and you regularly received feedback on an assignment after you had already submitted one or two more assignments. If there had been some community, there would have been more learning from other people’s comments. Eight years after my Philosophy course (in which I received a paltry 68%) a friend took the same correspondence course and it wound up being the same teacher. For the major paper, he was now handing out an exemplar, WHICH WAS MY PAPER THAT EARNED A 68%!!!! Had I given my consent? No. Was my name still on it YES!! Did I have any recourse to complain about it? At the time, no. But I was sort of proud, although I questioned it being an exemplar when I did not receive a great mark on the essay. If there had been some sort of community, I would have found out about this long before AND realized that this professor thought a 68% to be an exemplary mark in an introductory philosophy course. How did the university not recognize that none of his students performed well and that possibly the problem was his marking was extremely stingy?

For my asynchronous courses, the early ones had only a virtual bulletin board/forum system to connect with others. The posts were meant for clarifying questions for the teacher, not community building. It did not feel much different than the old snail mail correspondence course, though you could get responses more easily if the teacher looked at the board more than once every week or two. More recently, courses I have taken (other than for my masters) include separate forums for personal introductions (required) and sharing of thoughts as well as questions. There are group assignments to encourage community building. These courses also provided an opportunity to reach out to others in a backchannel by directly contacting other participants through the course site. If you want to continue communication after the course, some of the platforms allow access to the real emails (as opposed to communication only through the platform), some allow you back in to email through the platform so it goes to the real email and the person can choose to share their real email with you, and some of the platforms require you to set up real communication before you complete the course. As the asynchronous courses have developed, the design has recognized the value of student to student communication and made it possible to continue connecting during and after the course.

 

Now What?

So, how will this affect my math resource? That is a good question. Originally, I had planned a static type of resource, but I can see that the motivation and self-regulation components would benefit hugely from communication with a teacher and a community of students. Why I did not recognize this before is a shear lack of connecting the dots – any students I gave summer work to always had the opportunity to connect with me, and the successful ones usually did. Having an anonymous board could be the solution so that current and past users of the resources could connect. I would need to monitor the board so that it does not get abused, but I think I can manage that as part of my volunteer work in my retirement. As the users of the board will (should) be underage students, I am not comfortable setting up something where they can interact without observation when I am the person monitoring the entire resource.

Will my website skills be up to this? Well, hopefully I can get my literature review close to done ahead of time so that I can concentrate on the development of the elements. If I start at only one area/topic of the mathematics curriculum, that will likely be sufficient for my project.

As for hosting, I currently maintain a simple website on HostPapa. Years ago, we chose them as their servers were in Canada (and remain in Canada) and they support green energy. I will be doing research again on various hosts, with the aim to find hosts with servers in British Columbia whose privacy policy takes into consideration our province’s privacy requirements.

 

Readings

Baran, E., Correia, A.-P., and Thompson, A. (2011). Transforming online teaching practice: Critical analysis of the literature on the roles and competencies of online teachers. Distance Education, 32(3), 421–439. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2011.610293.

Conole, G. (2018). Learning design and open education. International Journal of Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from https://www.ijoer.org/learning-design-and-open-education_doi-10-18278-ijoer-1-1-6/

Conole, G., and Brown, M. (2018). Reflecting on the Impact of the Open Education Movement. Journal of Learning for Development – JL4D, 5(3). Retrieved from http://jl4d.org/index.php/ejl4d/article/view/314.

Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. (n.d.). Retrieved November 11, 2019, from http://www.bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/ID/freeside/96165_03#section30.1.

A little more Action!

Video licensed to YouTube by SME (on behalf of Bulletproof); Audiam (Publishing), Warner Chappell, PEDL, LatinAutor, Kobalt Music Publishing, AMRA, and 15 Music Rights Societies.

Something I know about myself – I do not like theorizing and not getting to the actual work. I am all for discussing and research, but once there is ample discussion and research and all you are doing is regurgitating, it is time to move on and try something. If it is not successful, then at least you have something new to add to your discussion/research instead of the same old same old that was not getting the result you were hoping for. This is why two of the articles we read this week were so enjoyable for me – they were suggesting actions as opposed to just summarizing what is known and posing questions.

The portion of Siemens, Gaơević, and Dawson’s article assigned supplied new information and as well as programs and people to research that will be helpful in my project. Yes, everything leads to my project, and I do not think that is a bad focus to my Masters. Realizing that George Siemens was one of the originators of the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) also sent me down a path of checking to see nationality and the potential for his work to take into consideration Canada and British Columbia’s (BC’s) strict privacy laws. I will be watching Stephen Downes’ gRSShopper and Learning and Performance Support Systems as well checking out the authors’ ProSolo. I followed all four of these researchers on Twitter and subscribed to Stephen Downes OLDaily as they appear to have information I may find useful, if I can understand it. Some of their information requires much more knowledge of programming and use of online systems than I currently have.

The article by Stephen Downes also had some good resources, but as they were all American based, I am not going to research them further at this time. His points on what is needed in both the development of technology as well as the development of online education resonated with me:

  1. “We need to change our framing, and in particular, we need to start thinking in terms of data and networks rather the documents, to get away from the idea that we’re publishing course packages, chapters, and modules.The existing system of learning and publishing is designed around static and unchanging resources, however, in this future, resources will need to be created as-needed to address current data and current contexts.” “Instructional designers should be thinking in terms of environments and experiences”
  2. “ GitHub, for example, requires a huge learning curve(GitLab, 2017). There is a change of perspective required in order to see works (whether software or content or other media) as dynamic, as branched, as modular, and as interoperating. Instructors and designers will require user-friendly interfaces that assist in this change of perspective.” “Again, it’s a shift in focus from the content to the interactions and operations. It’s about how to merge this data with this application or this capacity or this bit of artificial intelligence to create a learning experience for a person. This is a very different way of thinking about instruction and instructional design than what instructors and designers may be used to, and it will require practice and application on new leading design systems in order to support this transition.”
  3. “designers and developers will need to learn to co-create cooperatively.”

I found it interesting that Downes did not push his own developments in the article. Is it because he is doing the Canadian humble thing? I am hoping his developments are all based on Canadian privacy requirements and therefore very usable for our education systems.

References:

Downes, S. (2019). A Look at the Future of Open Educational Resources. International Journal of Open Educational Resources, 1(2). Retrieved from https://www.ijoer.org/a-look-at-the-future-of-open-educational-resources/

Siemens, G., Gaơević, D., & Dawson, S. (2015). Preparing for the Digital University: A Review of the History and Current State of Distance, Blended, and Online Learning. Retrieved from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation website: http://linkresearchlab.org/PreparingDigitalUniversity.pdf

No More!

Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash

I am at that “I don’t want to read anything other than for pleasure” and “don’t make me write anything original” point. I was really good over the holidays, reading academic articles daily, but I have hit my saturation point. So now I am setting myself a firm schedule of what I have to do and when to get myself back on track. If I don’t fulfill my obligation, I can’t eat or drink anything. Yup, it’s weird, but it works for me! And I could stand to lose a little weight. 😀

What I did find an enjoyable read  this week were two articles gleaned from other sources. One was written on January 10th by Kia Lang: https://www.techlearning.com/opinion/is-virtual-reality-vr-a-reality-in-the-classroom. Google is pulling out of VR because their funding has expired. They do not see a future for smartphone-based VR in a box. “The current uptake of VR in schools is gaining good speed, but this is simply NOT comparable to the quantity of business Google expects in the consumer space.” “the strength of education content developers such as MEL Science is based on their starting out as science education companies, not VR developers. It’s not about VR, it’s about using the technology for education to enable students to learn knowledge points better by interacting with otherwise invisible micro-level processes”.

The other was Leanne’s suggestion of reading https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/30/thinking-about-the-social-cost-of-technology/. Basically, people need to keep upgrading and learning or they get behind on tech. It has interesting opportunities for those working with older people. I have friends who are not keeping up on tech and therefore cannot exploit their phone’s usability. It isn’t about open digital online education at this point, because these people are not willing to spend the screen time to learn, but they will spend time talking with someone to figure it out/learn how to do it. An interesting conundrum to ruminate upon.

 

Opening Things Up

Image by Felix Wolf from Pixabay

Our readings this week were on various types of Opens: scholarship, data, online courses, and research. Veletsianos & Shaw’s article focused on information about the imagined audience and research on how those who post edit their posts based on the type of social media used and who they imagine their readers to be. The point of article was that educational institutions could create more effective policies to support networked participation of their constituents and therefore the increase in openness of information sharing. Atenas, Havemann, & Priego’s article focused on how using open data can be great for teaching. Skills developed included critical thinking and research, as well as mathematical skills in statistics and data information management and curation as well as data visualisation skills. Rohs & Ganz’s article discussed how Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are not the leveler or answer for inequalities in education. Even in our nation, electricity access, internet access, computer access, contextual information (not all are native English speakers or have the background to understand contexts provided), and capacity of cheaper computers to run programs or apps affect access to MOOCs. On top of these concerns is the level of media competence and self-regulation skills required by any user, which are difficult to overcome in weaker learners, even if the course design attempts to overcome weak media or self-regulation skills. Couture’s article emphasized the need for publishers not to be in control of open access journals.

So What?

As part of our Hypothes.is comments, Ben posted an article about the value for a back channel for learners. This is equivalent to the chatter that takes place in and outside a regular classroom environment, and although instructors may not like being excluded and some students may not be included, this is a valuable part of any educational experience.

In our breakout group, it was noted, not just by me, how everything comes down to money. As knowledge and educational resources move towards open access, the companies that made money from them need to find a different method of making money. A couple of journal publishing companies have started open journals to, in my opinion, experiment with how they can continue to find a money-making solution. As teachers, open scholarship and journals are both a blessing and a curse. Now, our schools can subscribe to particular journals and we know our students are accessing information that has been vetted by knowledgeable people. Once this information is openly available, how can we ensure our students are accessing valid information? Yes, access to the information costs less and we have more information available, but how reliable is that information? How can we find the time to check the authenticity of the information that our students find? The data on most government sites, can be useful in some courses but may be too complicated for the average secondary student to decipher. How will all these resources be made age-appropriate in language and relevancy for elementary students? How will the copyright and work attribution be affected when there is so much available that is similar? I don’t question that openness is a positive movement, but there are many hurdles to overcome before it becomes the norm.

Now what?

For my project, I have identified some areas of significance. As I am planning to embark upon an online open resource for high school math students, there are many considerations that these readings have identified.

  1. Veletsianos & Shaw’s article – I must remember that my imagined audience is not knowledgeable but also does not need talking down to. Some of the BCEd videos for online math courses that I saw about five years ago were embarrassing – they made students felt like they were morons as they were watching the instruction. Plus, students do not need artificial cheeriness. Also, I need to be sensitive that the resource is for a varied audience – not just already motivated students but language learners and math Learning Disorders (LDs). I wonder if a more “choose your own adventure” approach is needed rather than listening to a long discourse which students can tune out: ask a question, students have a choice for answer which leads them through the inquiry at a pace appropriate for them. Possibly add a screen capture tool so they can make their own instructional video? Or a summary video that is accessible once the inquiry is done? Or should it be always available? Hmmm. So many questions and too big a project. I will need to narrow it down to a smaller amount at a later point in time.
  2. Atenas, Havemann, & Priego’s article – I need to use some open data sources and ensure students understand how to find reliable and valid data, how to interpret the data, and how to display and make use of the data.
  3. Rohs & Ganz’s article – I need some tools that address less computer literate students – possibly a set of screenshots downloadable to print, use of clear simple language with possibly diagrams/images for clarity, and self-regulation help. I also need to address auditory LDs and reading LDs. Yikes.
  4. Couture’s article – not much relevancy for me at this time.
  5. Back Channel for learners – whether this is for learners to contact each other or just for a private line to me is yet to be figured out. How much will I actually be available? How useful will learners contacting each other be if it is not a synchronous course? Is this going to be my retirement volunteer work focus?

Resources

Atenas, J., Havemann, L., & Priego, E. (2015). Open Data as Open Educational Resources: Towards Transversal Skills and Global Citizenship. Open Praxis, 7(4). https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.7.4.233

Couture, M. (2017, July 12). Academic Publishing at a Crossroads. University Affairs. Retrieved from http://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/academic-publishing-crossroads/

Koenig, Rebecca. (2019, October 19). ‘Backchannel’ tools let students ask questions anonymously. And that brings more voices. Retrieved from  https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-10-24-backchannel-tools-let-students-ask-questions-anonymously-and-that-brings-more-voices

Rohs, M., & Ganz, M. (2015). MOOCs and the Claim of Education for All: A Disillusion by Empirical Data. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(6). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2033/3527

Veletsianos, G., & Shaw, A. (2018). Scholars in an increasingly open and digital world: Imagined audiences and their impact on scholars’ online participation. Learning, Media and Technology, 43(1), 17–30. http://ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/login?url=https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2017.1305966

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