| Learning in a Networked World Add to Planner
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wednesday, 5/9/2011 2:30pm-3:30pm (CHANGED)
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Showing posts with label techseminars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label techseminars. Show all posts
Friday, April 27, 2012
WHS May Professional Development Series
Sunday, February 5, 2012
PD Series: Using Canvas to Create Community
 |
| [1] |
Over years of teaching I have used many different tools for blended learning. From Moodle and Mahara, to Wordpress, Blogger, Netvibes, and wholly distributed systems of personal learning networks based on Networked Learning, MOOC and Connectivist movements in education and more. The purpose of all of these tools (and mine as a social studies teacher, tech integrator, and teacher of information studies), for online learning was to build a learning community that extends, enhances and amplifies learning while also allowing learners to build on interests, dreams and aspirations for their future. In transition to blended learning it is important that all involved, both teachers and students, are appropriately challenged. A good way to accomplish this in the early stages, is through the creation of a learning management system.
Canvas
Canvas offers a learning management system that is intuitive to students and teachers while also being connected directly with Google Apps. The result is a dynamic environment for course design, management, and communication. As an opening vignette to the professional development series tied to Web 2.0 Foundations we will look at opening a course with Canvas.
* As a reminder: I will set up faculty sites this year for all core courses in Canvas upon request.
Setting up an LMS (Canvas)
This process takes setting the stage for learning in a blended course environment.
The email:
Students woke up on Monday to an email from me with a small course welcome and the indication that they needed to check a link with a detailed explanation about getting course material:
The explanation:
http://whsii.blogspot.com/2012/01/welcome-web-20-foundation-participants.html
The email:
Students woke up on Monday to an email from me with a small course welcome and the indication that they needed to check a link with a detailed explanation about getting course material:
The explanation:
http://whsii.blogspot.com/2012/01/welcome-web-20-foundation-participants.html
The outcome:
One hundred percent of the students in my course who where on my original course lists came ready to learn and understanding enough to ask good questions about how they could "catch up" with what I had set forth as expectations. This is not in my teaching experience unusual. I have spent up to 24/7 with high schoolers for five weeks as well as in classroom settings and one thing I have found is that they respond to appropriate expectations asking them to take charge of their learning. Nothing special here. Hello, go to this link, this is what you should expect from me and this is what I expect from you. Students who have come in later I have worked with to catch up. Within 24 hours of the course start all students (across the spectrum) where in Canvas communicating with the Web 2.0 Foundations community.
What they found upon entry into OpenClass:
Organization, simplicity in design, pathways of communication.
What they found in Week 1
This is What I found:
Almost 100 Percent participation in the online forums....At all hours
Within 48 hours the internal Twitter/Facebook "like" course wall becomes populated with community interaction and peer to peer learning.
Setting up a blended learning environment takes work. But more importantly it takes a realization that young people can, will and prefer to learn in part by the digital spaces that their lives revolve around. In Web 2.0 Foundations first week students exhibited the core of 21st century learning. They found, validated, leveraged, analyzed and synthesized information and problem solved and collaborated in dynamic spaces. I hope you see how using an LMS might be a first step to blending your coursework and empowering your students to learn in new ways. For those of you using LMS now, you already know the benefits and I hope you will find specifics that might help or inspire....(and yes, you can upload your Moodle courses directly into Canvas).
PD Series: Creating Blended Learning With Google Apps and Canvas
Web 2.0 Foundations is off to a healthy and inspiring start.
The course introduces students to Web 2.0 Foundations (learning and technological environments) through the experiential based pedagogy of networked and mobile learning. Web 2.0 Foundations utilizes a blended learning design to create a virtual and face to face community that promotes ubiquitous learning for WHS students.
The worlds reality illuminates the fact that old models are not working or preparing students. What conversations should K-12 Educators have with Universities....
How educators facilitate and find confluence with the world and adapt or bypass current educational systems will determine in many ways the relevance of the teaching profession and schools. Colis and Moonen, Bonk and Graham (2006) [2] , Jacobs (2010) [3] agree that embracing blended learning is essential for 21 century learners and is a solid step forward for educators. According to the 2010 Horizon Report [4] (one of the most respected K-12 indices of research back learning trends):
Web 2.0 Foundations is using Canvas as an LMS platform. Canvas weaves with Google Apps and provides a "cloud based" solution for moving your class into the 21st century. Your content becomes fluid, your teaching opened to the wealth of resources on the internet and your communication/pedegogy amplified in a space that an overwhelming majority of students find comfort in navigating.
Posts dealing with Blended Learning will be "labeled" with blended learning canvas, lms and pd at the end of the post so you can easily find the series as more posts come in on other topics.
Thank you for your vision. Please comment and start a conversation below!
The course introduces students to Web 2.0 Foundations (learning and technological environments) through the experiential based pedagogy of networked and mobile learning. Web 2.0 Foundations utilizes a blended learning design to create a virtual and face to face community that promotes ubiquitous learning for WHS students.
According to Colis and Moonen (2001), "blended learning is a hybrid of
traditional face-to-face and online learning so that instruction occurs
both in the classroom and online, and where the online component becomes
a natural extension of traditional classroom learning." [1] Blended Learning is an essential step toward readying young people for 21st century living. As a learner, seeing the school classroom as a part or the learning process and not the whole is vital for success today. Likewise, Young people have the world at there fingertips and are using it:
The worlds reality illuminates the fact that old models are not working or preparing students. What conversations should K-12 Educators have with Universities....
How educators facilitate and find confluence with the world and adapt or bypass current educational systems will determine in many ways the relevance of the teaching profession and schools. Colis and Moonen, Bonk and Graham (2006) [2] , Jacobs (2010) [3] agree that embracing blended learning is essential for 21 century learners and is a solid step forward for educators. According to the 2010 Horizon Report [4] (one of the most respected K-12 indices of research back learning trends):
Technology is increasingly a means for empowering students, a method for communication and socializing, and a ubiquitous, transparent part of their lives. Technology is impacting all of our lives, and especially the lives of students, in new and expanding ways. Once seen as an isolating influence, technology is now recognized as a primary way to stay in touch and take control of one’s own learning. Multisensory, ubiquitous, and interdisciplinary, technology is integrated into nearly everything we do. It gives students a public voice and a means to reach beyond the classroom for interaction and exploration.We have the tools at WHS to move in the direction of prescient change without that change feeling radical. Blended learning starts with empowerment. Learners take control of their learning through participation in scaffolded online and classroom communities. The first step toward learner self determination comes through expectation and assistance in weaving a world of learning with your students by creating a community both public and semi-public that is with learners twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. Using a learning management systems (LMS) creates a link between face to face and virtual learning worlds without exposing the teacher or learners to the wilds of the public for core learning community interface.
Web 2.0 Foundations is using Canvas as an LMS platform. Canvas weaves with Google Apps and provides a "cloud based" solution for moving your class into the 21st century. Your content becomes fluid, your teaching opened to the wealth of resources on the internet and your communication/pedegogy amplified in a space that an overwhelming majority of students find comfort in navigating.
Posts dealing with Blended Learning will be "labeled" with blended learning canvas, lms and pd at the end of the post so you can easily find the series as more posts come in on other topics.
Thank you for your vision. Please comment and start a conversation below!
Friday, January 27, 2012
Google In Education: A New and Open World for Learning
Please view and download this document. It is worth your time.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
ePortfolio with Google Apps Series: Introduction
Google Apps ePortfolio Step-by-Step Process
In this post you will find a basic introduction to the ePortfolio process using Google Docs. The hard work WHS has done in designing Portfolio assessment will have an easy and effective framework to use through this process. This first post is the conventional view of ePortfolio development. How we choose as a community to add to this process is up to us. I will be offering a series of these posts with each step picked apart for training purposes. In each of those posts I will give live examples from our ePortfolio Template for 2011-2012.
We all acknowledge that there are serious competing interests for our time this year. That said, this is attainable! The hard work is done.... as a community you have aknowledged that Portfolio assessment is an integral part of learning at WHS. Framing portfolios as ePortfolios takes accepting that 21st century skills are a cornerstone to our mission at WHS and some effort. We are an amazing and versatile faculty and administration that has talents in technology that far surpass so many in Maine. Using this community, asking questions and supporting the young people we teach and learn with is second nature here. I will work hard to support the progression to uniform digital ePortfolios with my all and am looking forward to it!
Glossary: Primary Responsibility for ePortfolio Component
All School (AS)
Teacher (T)
Student (S)
Advisor (A)
Steps for using GoogleApps throughout the Portfolio Development Process
- (AS) Purpose. Decide on the purpose for the portfolio.
What are you trying to show with this portfolio? Are there outcomes,
goals, or standards that are being demonstrated with this portfolio? In
this example, steps 2-4 represent an interative process, using a blog to provide formative
feedback on student work on a regular basis.
- Teachers, Admin and (eventually) Students: Set up templates for student work in GoogleDocs organized around outcomes, goals and standards?
- Students: Customize a Google Sites page that will serve as the opening page/Introduction to the portfolio and to the portfolio developer (see Section 6 below). This page will include a section entitled, "All About Me."
- Students create a Google Sites Announcements
page type, to use as a reflective journal (blog). Call the page
"Journal" or "Blog." Create a first post that describes the purpose for
developing this portfolio.
OR: Students create a blog in Blogger (included under the GoogleApps domain)
(S) Collection/Classification. What artifacts will you include in your portfolio? How will you classify these entries?- Students: Create a digital archive of work Using GoogleDocs. Offline, this archive would be on a hard drive, flash drive, iPod or local area network server.
- Students: (Optional) Use a
simple table or GoogleDocs Spreadsheet to list the artifacts, and assign (classify)
each one to the outcome/goal/standard that the artifact will
demonstrate. Use the table to keep track of artifacts that might be
stored on one of the many Web 2.0 sites that you could use to store
your work. See Dr. Barrett’s portfolio for an example (Artifacts in GoogleDocs Spreadsheet).
Students will: convert all attached artifacts into web-compatible formats (JPEG or PDF) so that the potential reader will not need to own the original software in order to read it (i.e., Microsoft Office, Publisher, Inspiration documents could easily be converted into PDF and attached to a blog entry, or link to GoogleDocs).
Web 2.0 storage: Video files can be saved on one of the video sharing sites, and use the Hyperlink or Embed code to include in your blog entry. Word, Excel and PowerPoint files could be uploaded into GoogleDocs. Other free websites that allow you to store documents: SlideShare, Scribd. Most of these Web 2.0 sites use an email address as the log-in name, so it will be easy to remember.
(S, T, A)Reflection. Reflection is the heart and soul of a portfolio. Reflection provides the rationale for why these artifacts represent achievement of a particular outcome, goal or standard. Blog entries provide an opportunity for reflection "in the present tense" or "reflection in action."- Teachers: Provide students with resources to support their reflection activities. For each learning activity or artifact, what should be the focus of the students' reflections? (See Dr. Barrett's Google Site on Reflection for Learning)
- Students: Write a blog entry (using Journal set up using GoogleSites Announcements page type, or in Blogger--Step #1 above) with a reflection on each learning activity or artifact (what is the context in which this artifact was developed? What did you learn?).
- Students: Add your own classification using Tags
- Students: Add appropriate artifacts (through hyperlinks) or as an attachment to the journal entry.
Privacy Features: Students can limit who can read the Google Site through the More Actions ->Share this Site menu item.
(AS) Connection/Interaction/Dialogue/Feedback. This stage provides an opportunity for interaction and feedback on the work posted in the portfolio. This is where the power of Web 2.0 interactive tools becomes apparent.- Teachers and Peers: Use the feedback features of Google Sites or GoogleDocs, such as comments, to provide feedback on the work posted in the ePortfolio/blog entries. Guidelines should be provided to support more effective feedback.
- Teachers often provide exemplars for different levels of achievement, and provide a rubric for evaluation.
- Students should be given the option of updating the work, based on the feedback and the rubric.
REPEAT steps 3-4 for each learning activity or artifact.
Summative Reflection/Selection/Evaluation. At the end of a course (or program), students would write a reflection that looks back over the course (or program) and provides a meta-analysis of the learning experience as represented in the reflections stored in the blog/journal entries.- Students: Review the blog/journal entries for that category, and write a last "retrospective reflection" about the learning represented in the artifacts, selecting one or two examples that best represent achievement. This self-assessment should be the first part of a page set up in Google Sites.
- Students: Prepare a GoogleSites Page for each Outcome, Goal or Standard, and link to the selected "best" blog entries, writing a reflection on each page (by outcome/goal/standard) which should also have the artifact attached or linked.
- Teacher/Advisor: Provide feedback and/or evaluation of the selection of work and rationale, using a WHS rubric.
Presentation/Publishing. The portfolio developer decides what parts of the portfolio are to be made public.- Student: Create a set of pages that highlight the best components of the portfolio, linking to specific entries in the blog. Add the evidence (through hyperlinks to blog entries or artifacts) to the appropriate sub-pages in the portfolio.
- Students: Customize your Introduction page, which should contain an overview of the portfolio. It serves as a “letter to the reader” and provides an explanation of the overall goals of the portfolio. Provide links to other pages developed in the portfolio. Advertise this Introduction page as the initial access point in your portfolio.
- Students: Create a page with Future Learning Goals (reflection in the future tense).
- Teacher: When used for summative assessment, submit final evaluation of portfolio (assessed using a quantitative analytic rubric or a holistic rubric).
Adapted under Free and Cultural Works with attribution to: Dr. Helen Barrett
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Welcome WHS 2011-2012
I continue to be inspired by WHS. We are doing amazing work here and I look forward to whats ahead. This blog uses Blogger which is available to everyone at WHS through our Google Apps account. I will be giving tech updates here from this point forward so please do subscribe to the blog (via email see right hand column over the videos) to receive updates and announcements from the world of integration at WHS. You can also add this blog to your Google Readers via RSS. My goal is to post here about school wide technology and innovation topics (like ePortfolio's!), troubleshooting topics that stem from your questions and our work together, student project work, the Web 2.0 course and so much more. I hope this makes communication easier for everyone.
Updates and general housekeeping to date:
General (Label: general)
All systems are up and running as of Wednesday 5 October 2010. Powerschool speeds and First Class additions are being addressed.
Website (Label: website)
Our website will be getting some major help soon! Prior to anything epic (and epic is needed:)), I will continue to find and change links to make things easier in the near term. If you have a need for our current website feel free to email me.
I have also revamped some important sites that link from our homepage. The Parent laptop site (Now Parent and Student), along with the WHS Tech Resources websites have been updated, added to and changed to a more current and salient state for our activities and action this year. The pages within this Blog now contain this information on ePortfolios, PowerSchool, Google Apps, a Resource Library of software and online tools along with some video detailing media literacy and 21st century skills. Please do visit each of these pages as they contain many new additions and I would like to hear your feedback on the media and resources now there. Feel free to leave a comment or email!
Google Apps (Label: googleapps)
As I have mentioned I am an unabashed Google Apps adherent and will be encouraging you all to take greater advantage of this amazing resource we have. Please do take a look at the new tutorials I have embedded on the Tech Resources website and contact to me with Google questions of any kind. As admin for our Google Apps instance I also encourage you to let me know if you need anything regarding your account. I will give periodic Google Tools in Education tips and tricks, stay posted and please use Google Apps often. The more you use them the easier they become.
ePortfolios (Label: eportfolio)
I am currently working on ePortfolio frameworks and look forward to your feedback soon.
My Schedule (Label: tcsmschedule)
I will be at WHS in the Tech Integrator capacity weekly this year. I am working out both help desk request protocols (scheduling to see me for the routine and integration). I am also excited about the possibility of working with the students in advisories on topics of integration, saftey and innovation. More on this soon.
Morning seminars and "un-seminars" (Label: techseminars)
Next week: See the Integration Information Page
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)