The Final Learning Summaries (Retirement reflections, cont'd!)

So the last few classes in my Internet for Educators course - or #I4Ed as it is fondly known by many, is always a celebration of learning and connections. I ask the students to go back over the course and summarize, within a 4 minute time limit, the key ideas they learned through the course. The idea is to create the artifact and have a narrated (at least partly) video type presentation. The course is a seminar approach with several guest speakers so every person takes something different from the guests. We watch the videos together during the last few classes of the term. This year was the last time I will teach this course, I love teaching this course, it follows a rhizomatic approach and I bring in several other voices into the learning. 

A few students shared their creation in public, on YouTube or on their blog, here are a few:

An amazing (and time intensive I would think) summary by CD.

https://youtu.be/3FlVYRgUw8k

https://katrinanoel97.blogspot.com/2021/02/final-learning-reflection.html

https://youtu.be/B4yl5EVB0GE

Finally, a huge thank you to all the people who have dropped in over the years, in person and by video over the years. I also thank all the many  students who took the course, I think they enjoyed the course and had much to think about learn from the course.

Passion Projects

Photo by Randalyn Hill on Unsplash

 So, teaching remotely this term, I wanted to mix things up. I decided I was not going to have zoom classes 4 hours a week. I know from having meetings over zoom for the past year, it can be mind numbing 😫, and sitting in front of screen for most of a day - and more so a week - is not good for anyone 😵. Since many of the other courses are fully on zoom - plus assignments outside of class -  I decided that I would use a combination of synchronous and asynchronous learning. One of the projects I decided on was a passion project. Everyone has things they wonder about and would like to learn about - well, they should anyway - so I took this idea, often used in K-12, and decided to go for it. The stipulations were straightforward - explore a topic related to using technology in education, make a plan, carry it out, learn, create some artifact to show the learning, reflect on the process and what you learned, share with at least one other classmate and with me.  Boom! Off they went, and the results were amazing and projects varied!  The students seemed to embrace the project, and many commented how they enjoyed doing it! My hope is that they can embrace such projects, or at least some inquiry learning, in their future classrooms. Some of the projects included:

• Several on video production - using videos in math, or physical education, or ... 
• A few looked into podcast creation and how it can be used in the classroom.
• A few looked at various apps that could be used in different subject classrooms: math, geography, the gym, etc.
• Some looked into coding, including making games, and robotics.
• One looked at using VR in physical education.
• Not to be left out, a number of music ed students looked into software for music recording or tutorials and creating amazing artifacts. One looked at using tiktok to deliver short tutorials.
• Another looked at creating tours in google earth to use in geography courses.
• Yet another collated and reviewed resources for teaching about reconciliation.
• and on and on ...

This was one project I actually enjoyed going through and providing feedback - and there were over 60 of them! My own reflection was - why didn't I do this along time ago! I will not be teaching again after this term - as noted in earlier posts, I will soon retire, but I would keep using this project if I was still in the game, and I encourage any of you out there to give it a try, the results were well worth it!

Sabbatical Over ... Back to Teaching

 So, the end of December marked the end of my half year sabbatical and return to the classroom. While the sabbatical was a good one - even if only half a year (I confess I certainly enjoyed the previous full year one more). I only took a half year since I am retiring in July and when taking a sabbatical, our CA states that you must come back for at least as long as the sabbatical, or pay back the salary earned. I did manage to finish some things up, have an article under review (on coding), and started a few other projects. One with a colleague who I have done collaborative work with often looking at educator use of social media during the covid school shut down last spring. Some interesting data, that is currently being analyzed so an article can be written before I retire! It was nice to do something on social media - it was the topic of my dissertation and other work I have done. Another project with 3 other colleagues is also going - I am the lead for now, but will hand it off when I leave. 

So, back to the classroom, I started in this profession in 1978, every year I had a course to teach - 27 years in a high school classroom, then as a Principal I taught a course as a sessional at BU. The only year without teaching was my full year sabbatical. This year, of course, is different. While I have taught several graduate courses online, all of our course are now online, including the undergrad courses. This winter I teach 2 sections of Using ICT in Ed for senior years and Internet for Educators. I am going to use an approach with synchronous classes using zoom and asynchronous 'classes'. I am so used to being in the classroom to demonstrate, have group work and discussions that this will be different. Even after 42 years, there is always something to learn ... in fact, I often tell my students that as a Principal I did not want teachers who thought they knew it all and nothing to learn about teaching/learning. I digress - I think 4 hours/ week on zoom (especially for all their courses) is mind numbing, so I will, for the mist part, go 2 hours on zoom and the rest asynchronous activities, with me available for individual meetings. To help demonstrate some ideas and apps I have been creating screencasts (Using Camtasia - it works very well - I should have been doing this for years and not waiting until my final 3 courses!).

In Internet for Ed I have always had guest speakers almost weekly, and this year is the same. I love the various voices and experience brought into the class, and the students blogs are always interesting as they reflect on each speaker's message. In the course we examine issues such as Internet (And issues - privacy etc.), literacy, identity, and citizenship, social media, online learning, and so on. 

In my ICT in Ed classes, I have a few projects that students can work on asynchronously. I will describe them in a later post, but one is a book club, and the other a 'passion project'. I hope that this will allow them to dig into topics of interest and allow some time off of zoom. Adapting and changing a course for online does pose challenges, luckily I have, as stated earlier, taught online before, but I am sure it is a lot of work for those new to it, especially for an audience not used to this mode of learning. It does requires more motivation and independence on the students part. This recent short article about a study of teachers about online learning points out what happens in many instances, and this is true not only of K-12, but also post-secondary, a tough thing to do when thrust into the situation with no previous experience, to be sure:

The report cites evidence that many teachers have tried to re-create the physical classroom experience for students by hosting long whole-group videoconference calls and sharing documents in the learning management system, approaches that are contrary to the advice of online learning experts.   (article on Education Week)

In a future post, I will describe some of the major projects mentioned above in a bit more detail. That is if I feel the urge to blog, something I have not been very good at doing, although I ask my students to do it in #I4Ed class ;-)