Last Tech Ed class- QR codes, HP reveal, scratch..

Today in class we learned about Scratch. Scratch is a programming code that was developed by M.I.T. to be more accessible to children and the public in general. It uses “blocks” that can be selected from a menu and combined like puzzle pieces to form a sequence for a ‘Sprite’.

It was simple to use in a basic way, but I think it would require more exploring in order to make more complicated scenarios play out. Rich McCue showed us various programs that have been developed such as an xample of a subject calculating the radius and angle of a farway object. This project would have lots of application in a classroom to explore Math and Physics. Students could learn about angles and the laws of motion. It could also be used in English classes to amplify storytelling.

However, I question whether a high school class would obtain enough benefit out of ot. I think features like the physics and math examples are worthwhile, but it would take a lot of time to learn the system in order to develop the example, and that time might be better spent exploring the topic in a more simplistic way. Therefore, I think this program is better geared towards students of Elementary school age.

QR codes and HP Reveal

(above is a QR code I generate that should take you to a youtube of a history video on the life of Otto Von Bismark)

QR codes allow you to display a URL visually, so that a user can just take a picture and be directed to that site.

Augmented Reality

HP Reveal- this app lets you put “Layers” on flat surface that can be scaned, the app will then display an augmented reality which plays videos. See the youtube clip below for an example where HP reveal is used in an AP chemistry class to show the molecules and how they combine to show compounds such as water and salt. I think this is a GREAT resource, I would love for students to be able to have a video of themselves maybe giving a presentation of the meaning of their poster, and having the poster be layered with access to that video.

Bookfull- This app is another augmented reality platform that brings story books alive. I think this will be great for my future niece or nephew.

Ap Chemistry video

Distributed Learning:

Blogging Prompt #1:

I haven’t had a great experience with distributed learning. My experience with online classes is that, it is like a knowledge train, with a set track, there is no opportunity to explore, go off topic, or to circle back around and have concepts explained in another way. I have always found that a face to face interaction is more useful when grasping a concept. However, there are students who may find the classroom as inaccessible, so creating distributed learning through different modalities could be useful in order to reach students on their level. But if an online class had ways to practice, or interact with a teacher and ask questions, an explain your difficulties, it could be worthwhile. In University I had some classes that were all content based, and it was just a download of information from the teacher to student, I would watch the videos of the lecture online, and could pause and revisit issues I didn’t understand, but ultimately I had the opportunity to clarify confusion with my professor at our weekly tutorials.

Blog Prompt #2

Exploring Face-to-Face vs Online is not longer the concept, but moving toward  an OR to an AND ie A blended face to face and online class. Students have choice now, they can prefer to take a course online rather than go with a teacher who is not well liked, or a hard marker. All courses K-12 and most can have the tuition covered. People with disabilities in post secondary might have to turn to programs at Royal Roads that are online but 3 times more expensive than UVic. It would be better if Universities could begin to offer course online.

“Online courses are brutal because hey tend to make them brutal” I really agree with this statement. I have had a bad experience wth online course but I feel a blended platform would correct the faults of both system. It would correct the need for everyone to be living in the same place, and it would correct the disconnect that most people fell with online classes.

Multi-Access means that people who are all online, or all face to face can access the course, means you will get more enrolment.  Learners should not be told to leave because they have a need that is not being met. Flexibility can help us keep the learners and still include them as part of the community.

I thought it was really interesting what Valerie said about Physical Disability being 50% of the population but the other 50% (who suffer from depression, anxiety, allergies) are not helped, having a multiaccess platform would solve so many problems and still maintain a high quality of education. I took to hear the idea that in the future, we can’t be stuck in our ways, and need to check our modality bias.

Multimedia Learning Theory:

Need to design multimedia to work in conjunction with how the brain works. Each brain channel has a limted capacity. Using two different channels (ie audio and visual) you can split the message between two channels, which allows for better retention. (Also known as Dual Code theory)

Some of the Principles we discussed about Multimedia learning theory that I found to be particularly interesting are:

People learn better from words and pictures, than just from words alone.

People learn better when a multimedia lesson is presented in leaner spaced segments

People learn better from animation and narration, than from animation and ext (the dual code, multiple channels ideas)

People learn better from conversational style rather than formal style.

Minecraft

Today our Tech ed class practiced exploring the MinecraftEdu platform. MinecraftEdu was sold to Microsoft for a lot of money, and they have been developing it as an educational tool. This seems like a great program, students can explore a variety of worlds, including “Alberta before Colonization” and “The Respiratory System”. Our class practiced exploring the world, and it was a lot of fun. We had to communicate on how to move through the map, and how to build new objects. It seems like the platform is really well thought out. Teachers are able to set the world to be on varying formats, difficulty levels, and purposes. There are also multiple teacher controls, where the teacher can pause the whole class, or restrict a students ability to construct, or text. I really like the idea of bringing something familiar to the students, like gaming on Minecraft, and show them how it can be used for an educational purpose.

Although this is a fun alternative to class, I am not sure how I would get across the subtleties of a high school social studies class. I think I would feel more comfortable introducing content using this platform if I was teaching a younger age group. As this will likely be the ONLY time I am introduced to Minecraft,I also don’t feel like I can fully appreciate its potential. I also don’t feel comfortable that I would know enough to integrate this in to one of my lesson plans. But it was fun. 

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

Today we met with Gary in the Business and Economic Lab and a bunch of us had a go at trying Virtual reality googles. This was actually the first time I had tried on virtual reality goggles. Today we tried only Virtual Reality. Augmented Reality is different from Virtual Reality. Where as Virtual reality allows us to experience a place that has been manufactured or photographed, Augmented reality allows us to view an altered world through the lens of technology. Augmented reality is commonly seen in social media platforms like Snapchat, where the user can post a picture of their actual selves, but with rabbit ear or a dog nose, or hearts for eyes.

I practiced exploring an Archaeological dig in Spain. The VR allowed me to move about and view the dig, without damaging anything. I was then able to view and object up close. I think this has a lof of potential for education as students in social studies could explore a roman villa, or the ruins of Pompeii, all without having to leave the classroom. Gary explained that there are 100’s of programs that can design these virtual worlds, but in order to interact with the space would require a lot more detail and design.

I believe this would be an excellent way to incorporate activities that promote Mayer’s theory of Multimedia learning. The theory of multimedia learning is that if you show information to students using multiple modes (ie video and audio) the student’s brains will be able to encode twice as much information. I think having a VR system where you could listen to the teacher’s lectures while exploring the material visually, and possibly even tactilely, would be a great benefit to student’s acquisition and retention of knowledge.

However, I think there is a safety issue involved. One of our group got quite nauseous and had to stop pretty quickly. There was also a risk of tripping over the cord (Gary said some companies prevent this by having the computer in a backpack on the user’s back). I kept trying to watch where I stepped on the ground, but of course I could not see my feet, and that disconnect between my eyes and my body did make me feel a bit sick.

 

Twine and a story of Adventure

We accessed the link through Rich McCue’s Google classroom set up, so we learned how to join a class and navigate through the various assignments. I created a class called “Just testing19” I REALLY LOVE google classroom. I practiced uploading Questions, assignments, and posts, including videos directly from Youtube. I think the questions, and surveys and short projects would be great assessment tools, to understand mid lesso whether student’s are grasping the concepts or not. Rich also showed us how to set whether the assigned document can be edited by all the student’s at once, which could be good for a group project, or selecting create a copy for each student, which means they can edit their own copy, with their own work, and send it back to you.

One of the nightmares I have is how to organize all my student work and submissions. I think it would be much more organized for myself and my students to have one source where we connect, instead of having usernames, passwords and work stored on a bunch of random open sourced sites, even though I know this is not Valerie’s preference because there are some sketchy things with how a multi-national corporate like Google uses our information. I think there is some good reasoning behind Valerie’s approach. I too am worried about how my information is being used. But I think I would be more worried about learning how to use multiple different sites and having my students submitting assignments to me on multiple platforms. I know some schools abroad (ie. Macau) require teachers to be Google Level 1 certified, and I think this would have been a great task for us to have completed, and then we could have a solid understanding of a popular tool, and a concrete certification we could add to our resume.

We then practiced using Twine, which is an open source tool for telling nonlinear stories. I created a story where an adventurer had to fight a Dragon, but had to talk to the Wiseman and gamble enough money to get a sword to fight the dragon. Twine also involves a bit of coding practice, as you can put in different options to connect to various passages. You also needed to code properly in order to submit images in to the story. We practiced using images from the creative commons, and making sure we chose images with the right level of intellectual property licence. I would also make sure I properly cited all sources, but so far I have only input a basic draft citation, as I am not anticipating publishing this story.

I went a bit ambitions with the story, so I didn’t have time to make it complete, but I did make a lot of links, practiced making text bold, italicized and underlined. And I even tried putting in a randomizer event, when you gamble at the tavern. This involved using some basic coding to create different randomized outcomes. I had it so that you could go gambling and it was randomized whether you could win or not. But it is pretty basic.

We uploaded the Twine story using Cyber Duck, so it is stored on our UVIC webspace here https://studentweb.uvic.ca/~davidheffernan/adventure-twine.html

I had a lot of trouble following this route. There were about 20 steps using Jargon I had never heard of. I, and most of the class, got lost after step 3 and just sat waiting for individual help. It made me feel incompetent. I imagine it would be the equivalent to your mom telling you all the recipes to a Thanksgiving dinner at once and then saying “Go for it”.

I am definitely going to use Google classroom, and I think Twine would be a great way to have student’s express a historical event through the choices made by the individuals involved. Like the example we were shown of the Chinese immigrant.

Poll Everywhere!, Trello, and Edcamp

Edcamp

In class we practiced exploring the Edcamp concept. Edcamp functions like an academic conference, except the attendees choose the topic of conversation. Edcamp is known as a an “Unconference”, as it began as an alternative to regular conferences. Regular conferences usually have a chosen topic which you can either agree to show up and hear, or not. They require a lot of planning and organization around presenters. However, with Edcamo you do not need to organize presenters, or have atendess sign up to topics they might not be interested in. Each Attendee would write on a sticky note what they would like to talk about. Similar ideas are grouped together and then each participant would get 3 votes to place a sticker on the idea they would like to discuss. What ends up occurring is that some ideas are more popular than others and those are the ideas that are singled out to be the topics for the day. Each attendee is then free to attend that room to discuss the topic that the group voted on. For my Edcamp none of the topics I voted for got selected, but I still felt that I had a say in what we discussed. We discussed the concept of mental health and bullying, especially how this has changed with the growth of technology. Many attendees commented on the speed and wide distribution that a negative photo or comment can have, and the difficulty of having that negative photo taken down or removed. With platforms such as snapchat, kids are increasingly inviting a wider world into their personal lives, affecting their privacy and exposing them to bullying that is hard for a school or teachers to control. Like anything, technology i a double edged sword, and the group concluded that it is important to teach student’s how to manage their privacy online, and to teach the values of why bullying is wrong, and how to stand up to it.

Tech Tool:Poll everywhere!

Next in class we chose a Tech Tool to review. I chose an online polling app called “Poll Everywhere!” I chose this app because I could absolutely see myself using this in my classroom. I think it would be ideal for a class like Law 12, where you could ask questions like do you agree with the court’s ruling in this case? You could also use the app to test for comprehension, by asking, what part of this concept was the most confusing for you?

See Below for the website Link, it has a great resource on How it works”

https://www.polleverywhere.com/

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you watch this video https://vimeo.com/37674303I  This video is a great resource for understanding the platform.

You do not need to buy special equipment as it is all online based. The downside to this is you would most likely need to have a cellphone in class. It is possible to use a platform from a computer, but my classroom observations show that the computers are not likely to be present in class.

Trello:

Trello is online collaboration tool that allows you to have certain tasks  For example you could have one board saying “Ideas” and another saying “in Progress” and another saying “Completed”. In this way, you can track the progress of your ideas and visually see what tasks need to be implemented. In each category, for each task you can have comments and feedback from fellow collaborators. So far I have not seen the benefit over a written list in an agenda, that you can physically cross-off, and access without the need for internet or remembering yet another password. But I do like the simplification and the ability to visualize your tasks. I think Trello would be great if you had 10 people working on a large task together. I signed up for Trello and gave it a whirl, but I have not visited it frequently.

Open Education and Creative Commons

Today we learned about Open education and using Creative Commons licences. There is an idea in education that knowledge should be open to the public, since it is the public which funds education, and teachers should take on the role of making content open to the public.

Our class was shown the BCcampus Open ed website (https://open.bccampus.ca/)

At this site you can access free textbooks for your courses.

We also had a long discussion about the importance of respecting Intellectual Property in teaching, and how the confusing around what can, and cannot be used, leads teachers to avoid sharing their materials, and case contributing to the learning community. People used to feel conflicted about opening up their copyright because they felt there was no options between a fully closed copyright and an open copyright. But  Creative Commons has created a series of levels in your licence so you can control the spectrum of allowable use. For example, you can allow your images to be used only for non-commercial purposes, Or only to those users who agree to give the creator credit, or to not alter the image or text. In this way, the creator can set the restrictions in the copyright licence however they like.

See below for an example of how a photo from Flicker was uploaded and attributed, as well as a site which shows how to ideally cite the creative commons source.

(Attribution: “Squirrel Photo” by Ben Ponsford is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, no changes were made to the original photo. )

Ideal attribution criteria https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_attribution

Video Editing, Audio Editing, and Screen Capture

Video Editing:

The other day we learned video editing techniques and how to create and edit movies using IMovie. We practiced using a video of our teacher’s daughter feeding her goats, and we practiced clipping the movie and inserting transitions, editing the length of the video, and inserting text titles. I LOVED inserting a “Star Wars’ style title with my own voice mimicry of the star wars theme…hilarious.

We already have experience with video editing using “Wevideo” creating our THIS IS ME VIDEO for our Multiliteracies class.

Audio Editing

Afterward we practiced Audio editing skills using Garage Band. We practiced importing a royalty free song, and then I had my voice over of an interview of my “elbow partner”, Sam. I think to record my podcast for my Open Inquiry, I will more likely use GarageBand than Audacity. I took a few minutes out to play around with Audacity and I found that the interface not as well laid out or intuitive.

Curation:

We briefly went through Feedly which allows you to gather and organize content on the web, around certain topics. Feedly is a Rich Site Summary reader, which reads the new content, and determines how to categorize it. My class colleague DJ also informed me of Spreaker, as another alternative RSS curation site. I think this will be the site that I use to translate my audio into an RSS feed that can be posted on Itunes, and other podcasting sites.

Screen Capture and recording tools

Afterwards we practiced using Screen capture and recording tools, such as Sceencastify. This tool would be ideal for posting a video showing how to navigate through the internet, as you can record your voice and image while having a real-time images of your computer screen, showing your on screen actions. In this way you can narrate your activities and guide students thought complicated tasks on the computer or internet. In the link below, you can see a video of me practicing some of these techniques. In order to post this video I also had to create a Youtube channel, which was a new and interesting experience for me.

https://youtu.be/0ffU19eCT4I

 

 

Field Trip to PSII

On October 9th, our Tech Ed class took a field trip to the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry https://learningstorm.org/.

The school is an Inquiry based school founded by Jeff Hopkins, a former Superintendent of the Gulf Islands School district. The students don’t attend regular classes but work on a variety of projects, from 1 to 20 at a time, with most focusing on about 12 projects. The student’s inquiry process starts by asking questions they have about the world and certain topics. These projects usually progress to become multi-faceted, and most become multi-disciplinary. Throughout the year the teachers make find out how certain particular projects would contribute to certain courses. So one project on weather, may involve socials sciences, geography, mathematical calculations, and physics. So this one project would advance the student’s learning in all of those subjects, and the students would be given a grade to put on their transcript.

I think this type of an Inquiry based school is a great idea. I like the idea that schools like this can be an option for students in the future who don’t fit the “mold’ of traditional schools. However, I don’t think this model would suit all students, I think the students would have to have a certain level of drive and ambition to make their projects progress.

I think the environment created was exceptional, I liked that students could leave and go to the Gym and work out mid day. I liked that I saw Gr 10’s working with Gr.12’s. It seemed like a school that had a great learning environment and sense of community.

September 23, 2018- First Edtech Post

This is my first blog ever.  Our Education Technology class is using WordPress to document the development of our Educational Technology competencies.  I have typed it up in Word as I am unsure of actually how to post a blog, and I was afraid I might lose my work. I would have loved to have an actual walkthrough example of how to post a blog with the appropriate categories.

 

This is completely new territory for me, but I am excited to learn. I appreciate that the class is marked Pass/Fail because I feel that I now have more freedom to attempt to master skills that will be challenging to me. I feel this style of grading will ultimately make me more likely to challenge myself to work on projects that I can use in my classroom, rather than just focus on areas that I know I am already good at. This is an important part of professional learning, to challenge yourself to achieve true growth rather than just perfect those areas where you are already proficient. I have always believed that a Teacher should always be learning, and should never go too long without putting themselves in the position of a student, even if it is just to remind themselves how difficult it can be when you feel confused, or challenged with a difficult subject.

 

In this blog, I will discuss my thoughts on my recently acquired Twitter account, as well as the privacy and safety implications we have discussed in class.

 

 

Twitter:

 

For years I had avoided getting Twitter. As a former Personal Injury Lawyer, I was well aware how much of a person’s personal information is on the internet, often through ways in which we are not even conscious.. I discovered this because opposing counsels would end up researching client’s social media feeds, news articles, and anything on the Internet to use in the case as evidence, and I was always amazed by how much they were able to find, and how much information could be inferred about their lives from their online footprint.

 

I am currently on Twitter as @DH49542190, I had only entered DH but the other numbers were randomly assigned to my name. In signing up for Twitter, I chose to use my email instead of my phone number, knowing that an email is much easier to switch, or to block unwanted spam than a phone number. However, within minutes of exploring Twitter, I was told that I was “acting like a Robot” and that the only way to unlock my account was to attach a phone number to my account. So I was forced into revealing my phone number anyway. I have also gone into the Tweetdeck platform and I much prefer that layout over the traditional account.

 

I think there is an inherent conflict of interest in social media platforms, as they have a vested commercial interest in having a user post as much of their personal information online as possible. By doing this, their site becomes a better resource for information, and therefore more valuable.  In the first minute, I was asked by Twitter to post the details of my name, my phone number, my birthday, and where I live.

 

I do not believe that Social Media corporations actually care about a user’s privacy.  I may continue to explore Twitter but so far I have not been impressed.  I believe that social media has caused our society to value an individual’s privacy less, and to engage in simplistic 280 character conversations.

 

I also have concerns over how the growth in Social Media has caused a growth in cyberbullying of teens. I have personally been involved in situations where students under my care have been cyberbullied or were the victims of a cyber bully. In each case, the bullying was made easier by the anonymity that various social media accounts provide. This made it more likely for cyberbullying to occur, and it seemed the comments were more hurtful because the bully felt protected by the anonymity of their social media platform.

 

Privacy & Safety:

In our Technology in Education Class, we were taught that as teachers are employees of a public body their actions are governed by the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act of B.C. (FIPPA). This Act states that a teacher cannot disclose personal information of a student, including their image, without the consent of the student, or their parents, depending on their age. During my classroom observation each Wednesday I have taken several photos of the buildings and school materials and it has been a challenge to try to take interesting and creative photos and videos to use in my blog while trying to avoid an inadvertent release of a student’s image or personal information. Respecting the rules of the School, and the Act is important not only for the student’s privacy, but also for their safety, as some students may have a unique situation where the disclosure of their personal information could put them at risk of harm.

 

I look forward to writing more blogs to document my growth in Educational Technology.