EC&I 831 – Summary of Learning

I decided to take Alec up on his offer of reflecting on our learning through a digital storytelling medium rather than in more of a traditional written form. Hopefully the reflection I went through is evident in the finished product. Believe it or not, I spent about 12 hours putting this together, making sure objects and backgrounds were relatively to scale, maintaining continuity, establishing some symbolism with backgrounds, etc. Unfortunately I can’t figure out how to embed my Prezi in here so you’ll have to follow this link if you want to check it out. Hope you enjoy it.

EC&I 831: Experimenting with Evernote

After last week’s session on Remixing Education with  Brian Lamb and Scott Leslie, Alec encouraged us to experiment with one or two of the tools  that were discussed during class. Having signed up for an Evernote account (on advice from Alec) a couple of weeks earlier I thought this would be a worthwhile tool to look at. For those of you that haven’t heard about this tool, it essentially allows you to take “notes” on anything you see online by clipping text, grabbing screenshots, etc. It also can be set up to organize these “notes” for you, though you can also choose to do this yourself. I’m no expert with this tool and I’m sure that it does a lot more than this too, but this video also provides a decent overview.

I’m sure I have only scratched the surface of what can be done with Evernote, but it looks like a potentially powerful tool. My main issue with it is figuring out exactly how to make it a part of my web 2.0 “routine”.  I have found other tools such as Delicious easy to make a part of my routine, but my first impression of Evernote is that it seems like it might be more time consuming to use, especially on a regular basis. This impression might be inaccurate, but it almost seems like it has too many possible uses for me to figure out how to use it best.

I am interested in learning more about Evernote, particularly its uses for educators. I have a long way to go in terms of wrapping my head around all of its capabilities,  so if anyone out there can give me a place to start or has any tips it would be appreciated.

EC&I 831: Belatedly addressing new media literacies

NOTE: I apologize in advance to my three faithful readers, you will have to excuse my disjointed writing in this post. This blog was written in four separate chunks over four separate evenings during the past two weeks. Having a seven month old recovering from hernia surgery kind of throws the late evening productivity out of whack…

As I sat down tonight to attempt to find time to view this week’s EC&I 831 elluminate session on Remixing Education I realized that I still hadn’t responded to last week’s session on Understanding Social Media. I really enjoyed this session; it reminded me of the UBC Okanagan Summer Institute class that Alec put on. It was that course that really got me rolling on my masters project and got me into EC&I 831 in the first place.

Alec’s big question for us to consider after this session was “What are the new media literacies, and how should teachers and/or schools address these?”  After considering this question and watching this video I found myself reassessing some of my views on this topic. Perhaps the most important idea I latched onto was the idea that people, and students in particular, are now playing important roles as producers of media, rather than simply acting as consumers of media. As a Social Studies teacher, I have always taught students skills to analyze various forms of media for bias, accuracy, etc. These skills will continue to be important to students as they continue to learn how to derive meaning from all forms of media, be it media created by multinational corporations or their Facebook friends. However, I now feel that it is equally as important that students learn more about their roles as media producers.

Students need to be aware of both the new powers and responsibilities that they have as producers of media.  I say powers because evidence of the impact that individual media producers can have arrives almost daily, be it in the form of an athlete breaking news or in the form of mass political protest. And I say responsibilities because students, and Canadian politicians apparently, need to be fully aware of the impact that media of their own creation can have on themselves and others.  We cannot expect students to learn the about the dangers of “sexting” or posting unauthorized videos on Youtube or Facebook by simply banning these mediums in schools. These new media literacies need to be taught in schools, the question now is whether or not the powers that be will agree.

Google Apps: Testing (using Google Forms), 1, 2, 3…

The Google Apps experiment continued today with my first foray into conducting tests using Google Forms. I have previously used Forms for conducting student surveys and student self-evaluations, but I knew there would be some logistical challenges in attempting to conduct a test online. One issue I anticipated was the challenge of ensuring that students weren’t attempting to communicate via Google Chat during the quiz. I attempted to address this issue by reminding students that they should not be switching between different windows during the quiz. While I cannot be certain that this didn’t take place as I circulated around the room, I don’t believe this was a major problem. In the end the biggest issue for administering a quiz online was the standard layout of the computer lab. With students working side-by-side on computers it would be fairly easy for students to see the answers on their neighbour’s monitor. While I trust the vast majority of my students I would not be surprised if a few eyes wandered during the quiz.

As for the quiz itself, I chose to start off small with a short answer quiz based on group presentations on Canada during the Victorian Era. Creating the quiz in Google Forms was a very simple process, as outlined in this video:

Once the students were done their quizzes they were incredibly easy to mark. As outlined in the video, the student responses appear in a spreadsheet immediately upon being submitted. Having these responses appear in a spreadsheet makes even the short answer questions I used easy to mark. Unfortunately, I could not figure out a way to insert a grade or any comments on to the quiz itself, so students would have to review the quiz on their own to determine which questions they answered incorrectly. I would be interested in seeing if there was a way to get around this issue.

All in all, I would say that my first attempt to use Google Forms to conduct a quiz was a success. My students seemed to enjoy the process of writing a quiz online and I found the spreadsheet results to be ideal for marking.  While the potential for students to be able to copy answers off of another classmate’s monitor is a concern, I do foresee myself using Forms for other quizzes down the road. I am open to the possibility of conducting larger tests online as well, though I would need to attempt to address these concerns beforehand.

EC&I 831 – Games in the classroom

In this week’s EC&I 831 Elluminate session with Sylvia Martinez we discussed the increasing interest in attempting to use games in the classroom. Sylvia’s presentation triggered some interesting discussions within the back channel about how educators have used gaming to support learning in their own classes. Liz Becker (AKA Ellsbeth) mentioned her use of the game “Medal of Honor” in an activity where students were given the choice of sources to assess for historical accuracy. I thought this was a unique way to teach students an incredibly valuable skill and it made me think about potential uses of games in my own classes. In Social Studies 11 we examine Canada’s involvement in World War I and World War II and my (mostly male) students frequently ask if they can play Call of Duty to learn about these topics. I had never given this idea serious thought up until our session with Sylvia, and I highly doubt the students who keep raising this idea had either. But why wouldn’t an activity similar to the idea suggested by Ellsbeth work? I’m going to have to give this idea some more thought and figure out how to balance learning through games alongside attempting to prepare my students for the final game of Trivial Pursuit, I mean final standardized Provincial Exam.

Another major theme in Sylvia’s presentation was how often educators adopt terrible “educational games” that have little or no appeal to the students they are aimed at. I was one of several class members who voiced a certain level of disdain for “educational games” based on my experiences with them in both my school and teaching careers.  I have seen countless examples of poorly designed “educational games” that cost a large sum of money to buy and go over like lead balloons when students sit down to “play” them.

While reading through my local newspaper the morning after class I stumbled upon a small article titled “Online game teaches healthy eating”. The article discussed an online game developed with the support of the B.C. Dairy Foundation that was designed to teach kids about Canada’s Food Guide and healthy eating. After reading the article’s description of the game, titled “Titanium Chef“, I thought I had found yet another example of a terrible educational game. Unfortunately, I couldn’t confirm my assumption as none of the links on the game’s site seem to work.  However, I did find some positive reviews of the game so perhaps there is some hope yet. If not, I will find some solace in the fact that the game is free to use and won’t cost schools thousands of dollars in licensing fees.

Google Apps: Short and sweet (or so I thought)…

Well, hours of time set aside to blog extensively about my experiences with the early phases of implementing Google Apps in my two Social Studies 10 classes have come and gone. Unfortunately, over an hour of that allotted time was spent attempting to get my sick 5 month old back to sleep.  When you combine this time with the hour or so I seem to spend procrastinating while suffering through “bloggers block” you have a fairly lethal amount of time well-wasted. As a result I’m going to have to post some initial observations about implementing Google Apps  in a few short bursts and hope for some feedback from my legions of fans…

Observation #1: My students dove right into their personalized Gmail accounts. They immediately went about adding their friends and classmates to their instant messenger contacts and had no complaints about only being able to add users from our Google Apps domain name. Initially students focused on using the IM tool for socializing only, but the time I found a student that was home sick communicating with me and her classmates on IM during class time in an effort to stay on top of what was happening in class was a pretty cool moment.

Observation #2: Google Sites are incredibly easy to use. I was able to set up a simple yet effective class site in a short period of time. I introduced Google Sites to my students and then let them lose with building their own personal sites. After some time spent exploring on their own I had them build their own “Socials 10″ sites for our class. These sites are fairly embryonic at this point, but they’ve played around with inserting my homework calendar and inserting work they have created in Google Docs. I’m looking forward to continuing to come up with new ways for my students to use their sites as they have really embraced this idea so far.

Observation #3a: Google Docs is a great tool for collaboration, but I wish the “Revision History” tool, which allows you to compare past versions of a given document, was a bit more powerful. I have had my students collaborate by using Docs to do some group writing and some peer editing, but it would be nice if the “Revision History” tool made it easier to get an overall picture of how much individual collaborators have put in to a given document.

Observation #3b: Keeping track of all the Google Docs that students share with you can get messy in a hurry! I’m still working on creating some system for organizing incoming documents automatically. I’m also attempting to figure out how NOT to get an email every time a student shares a doc with me. Any tips regarding either of these issues?

Observation #4: I was able to create a fairly thorough student survey form relating to their use of technology using Google Forms. I intend to use this tool for gathering student feedback on our use of Google Apps as a part of my masters project research. I also plan to use it to quiz students and as a type of “exit form” to figure out what topics students do or do not understand. Shortly after using my technology survey I witnessed another teacher attempt to survey every student in our school using paper surveys. I shuddered thinking about the nightmare of compiling all of that data and was glad had Google Forms to do the dirty work for me.
Observation #5: I need to continue to search for different lesson activities that can be improved through the use of Google Apps. I think I’m barely scratching the surface of what my students can be doing using these tools. If anyone has any ideas (big or small) that they’d like to share I’ll compile them all and test them out over the next few weeks.

Well, in the end I would say that this post is neither short nor sweet, but it is a start. There is still lots to be done and I will try to do a better job staying on top of my work with Google Apps in the coming weeks.

Dan
PS: I realize I forgot a fairly important observation…

Observation #6: All the Google propaganda I have been spreading in my blog, tweeting about on Twitter and bookmarking in Delicious hasn’t gotten me a whiff of an invite to Google Wave. C’mon Google, I’m drowning in your Kool-Aid here, would it kill you to toss me an invite already?

Thoughts on educational blogging…

Although I had to slip out of this evening’s EC&I 831 session with Sue Waters a few minutes early due to overriding parental obligations, I feel the time is ripe for me to respond to the question of the day: what are my thoughts on educational blogging?

Personally, I see significant potential value in educational blogging. At this point, I have barely gotten my feet wet when it comes to immersing myself as an active participant in the “blogosphere”. I have been blogging sporadically for educational purposes for the past few months. During this time I have enjoyed the highs of writing posts that have been viewed and commented on by many intelligent and helpful people from around the world. I have also endured the lows of writing posts that have vanished into the clouds with nary a whiff of a comment.  The comments that some of my blog posts have received have varied in content, with some being largely words of encouragement and others being responses to specific questions or issues I have raised. I see both types of comments as being incredibly valuable, especially to someone as new to this world as I am.

While I see educational blogging as a useful practice for both reflection and network building, I find myself struggling with the writing process. I am not the type of person who throws together a collection of thoughts or ideas and post them for the world to see. I’m the type of person who somewhat painstakingly deliberates over the structure of every sentence I write, be it for a student handout or a term paper. Not surprisingly I feel the need to do the same thing when writing a blog post to send off for the world (well ok, 32 people in a busy week!) to see. This slow writing process makes the issue of blogging a real challenge given the many demands that eat up large chunks of my limited time. I am hopeful that with continued practice the blogging process will become easier for me as it is something I would like to continue to explore using for my own uses and potential student uses as well.

An overdue update – A teacher’s role in non-formal education

I was finally able to get caught up on viewing the Elluminate recording of this week’s EC&I 831 session that I had to miss due to previous commitments. Yes, another wild and woolly Saturday night, but it was good to get one more item checked off the ever expanding to-do list. The fact that I have come to view learning opportunities such as this as items on my to-do list is disconcerting, but I guess that is a topic to address at another time…

Alec presented us with a key question based on this week’s session: what is our role in non-formal learning? This is an interesting question for me to attempt to address. I am gainfully employed in the world of formal education and I am provided with professional development and other learning opportunities as a result. I am investing a lot of money in the world of formal education as I struggle to keep my head above water in year two of my graduate studies.  Yet I learn more about teaching through the people I follow on Twitter than I have in ten years of pro-d workshops and a year of graduate courses. I think this is largely due to the fact that I can pick and choose who I want to learn from and what I want to learn about. I can’t say for sure, but I would imagine many of my students feel the same way about non-formal vs. formal learning. If students are able to expand their knowledge by following their true interests through non-formal learning they should be encouraged to do so. While I am not aware of sites such as this in my subject areas, I would be thrilled with my students using resources such as the Khan Academy if I was a science or math teacher. I know many teachers would feel threatened by seeing their students rely on non-formal learning opportunities such as this, but I would feel like a hypocrite to not encourage my students to learn in a way that has served me so well.

EC&I 831: Another course, another Couros…

The first week of classes are now but a memory. It seems like just yesterday I was sitting down for my first Tuesday evening EC&I 831 class with Alec Couros, and now it is Monday and I haven’t done my “homework” for tomorrow’s session. Oh, the joys of life as a full-time teacher attempting to complete his graduate studies with two small boys under the age of three…

One of the topics Alec suggested we write about in our first class post was our perceived skill and knowledge level when it came to using social media. I must admit I thought I felt pretty good about my skills in this area until I took part in our first Elluminate session and couldn’t even get my microphone to work. Fortunately, I did manage to get my webcam up and running in the middle of Alec’s intro to the course which apparently wasn’t supposed to happen. Clearly I have a couple things to work on, though I am fortunate to have taken part in Alec’s crash course on social networking earlier this summer. I can appreciate the concerns many of my “classmates” expressed at the end of our first session regarding the technological overload they were dealing with. All I can say to them is that they are in good hands and that, though their brains will be hurting at the end of each class, it is a good kind of hurting. Looking forward to another great class tomorrow…

And so it begins…

On Thursday I received the long-awaited seal of approval from my district’s superintendent regarding my plan to pilot Google Apps. Strangely enough she had more important things to deal with but I’m thankful she found the time to review my proposal. However, the week I lost while awaiting her reply is going to complicate my implementation plan as I hope to have everything up and running by September 14th or so. Dare to dream I guess…

With that out of the way I embarked on my first attempt to register a domain name.  I thought this would be a relatively simple process and found a suitable domain name (kalamalkasecondary.ca) at domainsatcost.ca. Registration was easy enough, but I got hung up at the checkout as I kept getting errors saying I hadn’t set registered my domain with CIRA yet, even though I had. After spending about an hour getting nowhere (while in a summer masters course no less) I pulled the plug in order to resist the urge to throw my laptop through a window. That evening help arrived in the form of Peter Vogel, a valued member of my growing Twitter PLN. Peter spent some time offering tips and helped me get my domain name processed and paid for.

With my domain name registered and paid for I was FINALLY able to sign up for my Google Apps account.  My domain name synced up easily enough but now I have yet another hurdle to hop over. After registering I noticed my account was for Google Apps Standard Edition, not Education Edition.  I referred to Scott Meech’s blog for pointers and filled out Google’s request form for the switch from Standard to Education Edition and now I am playing the waiting game once more.

While I wait for Google to switch me to Google Apps Education Edition I intend to start creating student email addresses, class calendars, tomorrow. I am hopeful that all of this work will carry over in the eventual transfer to Education Edition and that I can begin to make serious progress in the next couple of days.