Wander often, Wonder always

Category: edci565 (page 1 of 1)

Critical Evaluation Tool Rationale

magnifying glass near gray laptop computer

Photo by Agence Olloweb on Unsplash

Evaluation of the Evaluating Tools

On my blog post titled Curating Resources to Assist Remote Learning I include the following three evaluation tools to critique resources for their appropriateness, correctness, and contribution:

I particularly like ISTE’s infographic as ISTE is a leader in providing practical guidance for using technology in education (and also the creator of the National Educational Technology Framework).  The infographic is concise, easy to use and a great tool to use with students in the classroom.

I also found UVIC’s criteria for evaluating internet resources clear and easy to use. One downside to this resource is that it has not been revised since 2008, however it has been recommended twice in the past year by professors during my grad studies at UVIC which increases it’s credibility significantly along with knowing that the author, Inba Kehoe is a respected copyright librarian. I also appreciate that some of our students in the Victoria School District will attend UVIC and that using a UVIC created and accepted document can increase familiarity and connection with the university.

A search for “evaluating resources” on UVIC’s library website brings me to my third choice for evaluation tools: Berkeley University’s Evaluating Resources Tool. This tool is cited by UVIC’s Research Toolkit Summary Package (p. 11) and was recommended by graduate professors at UVIC. One final reason why I am confident using this tool is the recent update on June 29, 2020, which suggests to me that it has up-to-date content.

All three of these tools have more in common than they don’t which further strengthens my confidence in suggesting any of these three tools according to one’s personal preferences.

Evaluating my Resources

I used Berkeley’s evaluation resource and the guidelines of Authority, Purpose, Publication and Format, Relevance, Date of Publication and Documentation to decide which resources to include and which resources not to include in the blog post Curating Resources to Assist Remote Learning. This list is very similar to the criteria used by our school librarian and that which is taught to my students.

Referring to the Berkeley evaluation resource I took note of the following regarding credibility and relevance of my links and resources.

Government Documents and Leaders in the Industry

Each of the following links or references can be categorized as government documents or leaders in the industry. The intention for each of them is to increase knowledge and understanding of their topic and their primary audience is either educators or researchers (among others). These links are relevant to my blog as they provide reputable resources and additional information to the reader regarding my blog’s content. Each of the posts have the publication dates in brackets beside them. In some cases, sources are not cited (Government documents: FIPPA and  Copyright Guidelines), however you will find resources cited in the other links. I have included the Mission Statements of ISTE and UNESCO as it gives more information regarding the intention of these organizations.

ISTE inspires educators worldwide to use technology to innovate teaching and learning, accelerate good practice and solve tough problems in education by providing community, knowledge and the ISTE Standards, a framework for rethinking education and empowering learners.

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It seeks to build peace through international cooperation in Education, the Sciences and Culture. UNESCO’s programmes contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals defined in Agenda 2030, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015.

Common Technology (Websites and Learning Management Systems) in Education

The following links are for private businesses that are widely and commonly used in education. For example, SD61 endorses G Suite for Education, UVIC endorses Microsoft Office 365, WordPress and Moodle are free Blog and Website platforms, and Pixaby, Unsplash and Creative Commons provide access to open access education materials.

Links to the Personal and Professional Work of Educators

The following links or resources are to my personal work (offered as examples to some of the organization methods I suggest) or to #tiegrad 2.0 cohort members and contributors.

Scholarly articles are listed at the bottom of my blog. They were found using the UVIC library search engine with the criteria of “Peer reviewed scholarly articles” and “published within 5 years”, so they have been reviewed by respected researchers in the field of education and are recent in their findings. I certainly hope to add to this list and am not against including older relevant material, however when focusing specifically on open technology use in K-12 for collaboration I began my search by limiting the age of the publications.

 

Learning Design, Accessibility, and Student Engagement

Learning Design

This week we were asked to familiarize ourselves with several learning design resources (listed under references). Wow, AVID strategies everywhere! Clearly the creators and contributors of AVID are learning design specialists! Being trained as an AVID teacher 6 years ago was possibly the best professional development I have ever had. The focus on goal setting, study skills and higher level thinking infiltrate my teaching everyday.

Another key experience was when switched from teaching math and science to work part time as a home economics teacher so I could be home with my three young children. I was incredibly focused and intense in my teaching practice, and truly believed that the content that I was teaching was of utmost importance to producing successful citizens. When I started teaching home economics I realized that the only way students were going to get anything out of foods and sewing was if they had fun and could see some application to these skills in ‘the real world’. This philosophy translated beautifully into my teaching of junior science, senior math and senior biology. I try my best to provide a fun, relevant and engaging learning environment for my students; something I don’t think I truly valued prior to my experience teaching home economics.

Web Accessibility

On Tuesday’s class this week we had Kim Ashbourne join our cohort to discuss Web and Digital Accessibility. (Web accessibility deals more with the infrastructure and content of the internet, whereas digital accessibility refers more specifically to the accessibility of a tool or file). A key takeaway for me was that accessibility should be considered prior to accommodation. Certainly, there will be times when we are unable to predict accessibility issues, however failure to make curriculum accessibility is an act of exclusion and should be avoided whenever possible.

Accessibility tools include:

  • Captioning on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meets
  • providing transcripts when captioning is unavailable
  • Open Sourced Content
  • Read and write chrome plug-ins
  • create content with titles, headings and links that are accessible
  • Alt-text for images

Truly, an amazing resource for educators is Kim’s blog, which also includes the Powerpoint presentation from our class on July 14.

Student Engagement

Alec Couros and Bryan Jackson joined us to discuss how to create engaging online content. A few take-aways include…

  • Keep all content in one space
  • Dave Cournier quote “Community is Curriculum”
  • Provide incentives for students to contribute online, for example “How would you rank your contribution to the learning of others this past week” or “Identify 3 students that supported or enhanced your learning through their interactions, visibility, contributions or other activities.” Such questions would be great to add to my Environmental Science weekly reflections!
  • Build play and relationship into online environment. Great suggestion to include online-ice breakers in our remote learning website.
  • Alec Couros quote “Social collaboration as a means to curriculum”
  • I especially love the example of a hockey player guest speaker that was invited to read a homework list. This would be fun with teacher guest speakers, kids or even an audio-overlay for your dog!

Resources

Learning Design:

Accessibility:

Student Engagement

Curriculum Design vs Learning Design: A resurgence of the age old debate of Nature vs Nurture

Freddie and Frankie with Dad on Fourth Birthday 1964

“Freddie and Frankie with Dad on Fourth Birthday 1964” by Fritz Liess is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Our class on Learning Design are in the midst of developing an online resource for teachers to assist remote learning during the 2020/2021 school year. Covid-19 has forced teachers from the comfort of their classrooms to an online environment, and due to the rapid development of the virus, remote teaching was minimally (many may argue insufficiently) supported by learning design and professional development. Our cohort is contemplating “what went wrong?” and  “what went well?” in an effort to predict the needs and provide a resource that will support remote learning in conjunction with F2F instruction in the fall.

The perfect pairing for our Learning Design class is our Curriculum Studies class. While diving into the purpose, procedure and intention of creating curriculum in Curriculum Studies we are being asked to create the content for learning on our online resource for remote teaching. Perhaps in an attempt to simplify the subject and move on to the practice and art of teaching, I continue to equate curriculum to content. And yet the content we are creating for our online resource does not feel like curriculum. It truly feels like learning design. So what is the difference?

I still have much more reflection to do on the subject, but I would like to propose my thoughts and I would sincerely appreciate your feedback as I continue to wrestle with these definitions and concepts. I consider the relationship between curriculum and learning design to be similar to that of the Nature vs Nurture debate. Using the example of two identical twins, the DNA (near-identical building blocks of these two individuals) would be the curriculum. The curriculum is the same for all teachers in British Columbia: it is what we have to work with to direct or guide our teaching in the classroom. On the other hand, how those identical twins are raised (the nurture) is like the learning design, which is how the content is brought to life in the classroom and what skills are developed. I consider curriculum to be the creation of content and learning design to be the development of content in response to the learner.

It would be a challenge to raise a well adjusted, happy, productive member of society without the ‘nature’ and the ‘nurture’.  If the content or curriculum is weak, the development or learning design can significantly compensate. The reverse is also true, however ones’ true potential can only be reached when the nurturing is optimal.

In the classroom, that means the teacher approaches their learning design with the student’s best interests at the forefront. While teaching the content, they are nurturing a love for learning, determining what an individuals’ needs are in the area of social, academic and emotional development. In British Columbia, our new curriculum attempts to bring content and learning design together by introducing the core competencies: Communication, Thinking, Personal and Social. Reflecting on the old BC curriculum, the new BC curriculum has scaled back its focus on curriculum and increased the importance of individual competencies. In an attempt to increase personalized instruction, the focus has shifted from nature to nurture.

It continues to boggle my mind that the debate continues when the answer has always been clearly in the middle for me. The athlete with less natural abilities can surpass his competitors with hard work and determination (A weak curriculum, exceptional teaching), but the sky is the limit for an individual with impressive nature abilities and hard work and determination (strong curriculum and exceptional teaching). If we are going to meet the needs of EVERY learner, we have to be strong in curriculum, learning design and curriculum development. We should always be striving for excellence in all areas.

I wish the pendulum would stop swinging so violently.

Bibliography

Dawson, T. & Parsons, J. (2013) Developing Learning Outcomes for Your Course: a quick start guide.

Iowa State University Interactive Bloom’s Taxonomy