Tag Archives: design

W6 – Activity 2

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Lisa Nielson on 21st Century Educators Don’t Say, “Hand It In.” They say, “Publish It!…

 

How does this fit with my pedagogical beliefs?

As a new teacher, who wants to teach marketing/online communications, this fits entirely within my beliefs. I have personally gone back to school in my late ’30s to upgrade my skills in Marketing and every project I did, I kept for my resume and onhand for interviews. I believe that student work needs to be more than just ‘student work’ as Neilson seems to.

Do I buy into what she is saying?

I do buy into what she is saying and believe that today’s student would too.

Do the examples give you some ideas that you might want to try in my own teaching practice?

  • Screencast tutorials
  • Vokis
  • Google Voice Assignment
These are all new to me and I would love to try them out.

Does the “Publish It” philosophy impacts student learning in a positive way?

Yes. It let’s them feel that their efforts and time are ‘valued’ and they are less likely to think it is ‘just a dumb assignment’. It shows them learning about technology, which will give them confidence as well as keep them interested. It shows that their time in school not only helps for the future but can also show impact in their lives now.

W3 Activity 2 – My Personal Technology Plan

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My motto for teaching/learning online as I go forward is to learn something new everyday. Embracing new technologies takes dedicated time and an attitude that embraces change and improvement.

Technology Objectives

  • Macbook – Use Macbook to complete all EDDL work and assignments by utlizing each of the available tools such as IPhoto, IMovie, Facetalk, Skype, Google+, etc. The impact to learning is that I will be more fluent and adaptable with these tools and a stronger communicator/educator as a result.
  • KOBO E-reader – Use e-reader as a study guide for e-books to become more familiar with pros/cons, availability challenges etc.
  • Personal Learning Environment – Continue to use bookmark sites like Delicious or Diigo, as a new user, I am finding them helpful.
  • Productivity Apps – Learn to integrate various Apps (Cheddar, TagMyDoc, Dropbox) o take and share notes, create to-do lists, store files or organize academic schedules. I will investigate Trickster as it apparently helps you find all of your recently used apps and files. For creating lesson plans I will investigate iBooks Author to help formulate strategies for textbooks and reading assignments. This will all impact learning in a positive manner by increasing effectiveness and efficiency.
  • External Harddrive – As a professional / soon to be educator, I need to upgrade my archiving and security protocols to protecting my work. From this I will time machine my macbook weekly, or daily during high usage times, to a large external hard drive. The jmpact to learning of this is that I will be a more consistent educator with less technical set-backs that could potentially interrupt my coursework.
  • Flip Video Camera – Using a portable video camera to increase my comfort and expertise in filming different shorts. The impact to learning is that it’ll extend my reach to students who rely heavily on seeing and hearing, rather than reading.
  • Prezi – Create more presentations through Prezi to increase competency and clarity of presentations. The impact to my learning and the learning of others is that this tool is great for capturing attention in a way that Powerpoint is lacking. It requires a presenter to really know their topic, structure of presentation etc, in order to create an engaging presentation.

Proposed Learning Activities

My formal learning (courses) will include all of EDDL Courses this year, along with completing the TEFL Certificate which I am 50% complete.

My informal learning will be through various presentation tools like Prezi to help communicate various concepts, iMovie to develop my video creation/editing skills as well as some note-taking tools like Fetchnotes, which let you jot down your thoughts in free-form quickly. I will also be investigating Dunno which can take a note and let a service do the rest of the work for you completely in the background. Once you take the note, you’ll find a series of search results from sources including Bing, Wikipedia and YouTube.

My professional development will go on hold for a couple of years as I am resigning from my job at the end of July to take school full time while working part time to market a restaurant Por Que No and to some degree undetermined at this time, a hotel Costa Paraiso. I will fund my own marketing PD, which will help towards to online education field as this will be the subject I intend to teach online. My skillset will benefit from PD in SEO Optimization, Social Media upgrading as well as in becoming Google Adwords Certified.

Impact/Involvement of Wider Community

I will continue to build my teaching network through each course I take with EDDL courses as these relationships are key to increasing your impact and ongoing education.

Indicators of Evaluation on Plan’s Impact

At the end of my EDDL courses, I will review my level of competency with these tools and whether I need to focus on new tools. I will be evaluating tools on an ongoing basis in my learning over the next year as well.

 

W2 Activity Three: UDL Reflections

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 Elements of King-Sears & Edyburn UDL readings as they speak to online learning materials I have used, the environment in which I find myself using them and how they address my desired online teaching environment (blended or distance).

The online materials I have used in my work environment.

The online materials I have experience with for my own learning are Blackboard, Moodle, Dropboxes and WordPress. For my role as a communicator/marketer, I am manage the re-design, content generation for selkirk.ca, Selkirk social media  and my.selkirk.ca using WordPress, Drupal, T4 content management systems, along with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

My experiences in web design projects and ongoing communications have me a support of Edyburn’s Prop #1: That UD in education is fundamentally different from UD in the built environment. I see more consistency with Web Content Accessiblity Guidelines (WCAG) that are developed with organizations around the world with the goal of a ingle shared standard of web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organizations and governments internationally.

In designing the college websites, with the goal of engagement and effective communication in mind, the following principles from Sears-King impacted our design and content generation approach and pedagogy.

  • Flexibility to accommodate a wide range of student preferences and abilities and Proposition 6 (Provide an array of supports in a digital environment that students come to expect.) The design of Selkirk.ca was ‘responsive’ to ensure the content could be displayed on iphone, ipad and typical computer screens as today’s student’s are using their phones more and more. This is part of the WCAG2.0 Design Standards, in particular the Adaptability Standard (Create content that can be presented in simpler layout without losing information or structure.)  Further, to reach the target markets, the research shows that they are all checking social media (facebook, twitter) to learn more about colleges etc, so we have added this medium to our print, email, web, display communications etc to ensure we can reach them.
  • Equitable use of technology to help those with LD & perceptible information by combining visual with written content.    We designed our site to meet accessibility standards as best as possible. These can be found at http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/ and are quite similar (1.1 Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so it can be changed into other forms like large print, braille, symbols; but could easily be improved. 2.2 Provide enough time for users to read & use content etc)
  • Simple & intuitive use to present content in a straightforward manner considerate of students’ background, knowledge etc. In designing our primary navigation and site map, we worked to ensure it was navigable by providing a primary menu based on our organization across the top and a secondary audience-based menu (future students, aboriginal students, international students, parents etc) across the left of our home page. Our footer also had many quick links. All three systems help our users to navigate, find content and determine where they are.

Key factor for my desired online teaching environment…

Proposition 10, that UDL is much more complicated that people think, is a principle I believe important.

Unfortunately, in designing our websites in the past, we only gave ‘lip-service’ to designing for user personas, where you lump groups of users into similar needs/wants/styles etc and create content specifically for these groups needs. We started off with this but have let this drop as we continue forward in the busy day to day.

Wherever possible, I would like to be involved in creating curriculum and learning experiences towards each learner’s learning style preferences (aural/verbal, visual/physical, logical, social/solitary). An example of the Learning Style Test, for streamlining a learner experience, can be found at North Carolina University Index of Learning Style Test.

I believe we should tailor our content/curriculum to provide the preferred options to each type of learner.