Tag: EDCI569

This week’s bundle of reading seem to be centered around more projections of what future EdTech would look like. For instance, Siemens raised points such as “New forms of digital in/exclusion” and “Reimaging forms of EdTech suitable for an age of Climate Change”. My opinion on these articles has remained the same since embarking on my journey in this M.Ed course, and that is these articles are simply good banter material during coffee break, but far too theoretical and limited in use to be of worthwhile consideration. The idea of new forms of in/exclusion online calls on researchers to address “links between developments in technology, inequality and education”, and design education that is more accessible to all. My response is that while commendable, it is near-impossible to implement a catch-all approach given that actual state of public (or private) education. Social constraints will be a far greater barrier as those who are not “well-resourced” would prioritize financial stability over education; no amount of accessible education or technology can immediately put food on the table like an actual job. Thus the onus should be on policy makers to change their mindset that higher education leads to higher income. If the economy is floundering, then those high income jobs simply are not available (or only available to those at the highest education level, which defeats the whole purpose of education equality).
On the idea of sustainable and environmentally-friendly EdTech innovations, this is absolutely counterproductive. To make clear, I am not against those concepts nor the need to have technology which aligns with them. The issue is posing constraints early on would only seek to hamper innovation – optimization should come afterwards, not before.  His statement that this should be “priority for everyone working in the area of education and technology” is also laughable as those IN education and technology are and well aware of sustainability issues; it’s the population that is ignorant or malicious (ie. those rolling back environmental protection) which is having a greater strain on everyone’s limited resources.

Using bigger/faster(?) buckets to drain water from a sinking boat will lose out to the guy drilling holes in it. Everytime.

I feel this week’s article “When inclusion excludes: A counter narrative of open online education. Learning, Media and Technology” raised the most questions and concerns. It discusses all the ideal benefits which open education has been touted to have, and in particular, its inclusive and collaborative nature. What resonated with me the most is how the article provides counter arguments against these ideals and even points out the implicit negative consequences these approaches have. These overlooked reasons are why initiatives to implement open education in schools are often unsuccessful, as they are less manageable when placed in actual practice. For example, the idea that students engaged in discussion forums (after being introduced to ‘netiquette’) would be a more democratic method of learning as the environment is ‘safe’ and ‘open’, thus allowing for more diverse conversation. I would argue strongly against this concept for several reasons: 1) it’s highly unrealistic to ask students, especially online-only students, to openly share their opinions when they’re unsure how others would react to it. There’s also the lack of communication cues such as tone or posture to help elicit humor like sarcasm, making students (ought to) think twice before commenting. 2) The idea that learning from a crowd is a good thing – most social media sites are struggling to keep the influx of hate speech and misinformation from spreading. It’s also due to this ‘wisdom of the crowd’ that gave rise to anti-vaccination movement and climate change denial. Some topics are just not up for debate as one side is fueled by ignorance and aversion of factual knowledge. 3) Moderation of discussion content may seem beneficial, however it has the potential to turn it into an echo chamber of only positive statements or ones that align with the majority of the crowd; hence shutting down diversity as counterarguments would invite risk onto oneself.
While I support the movement towards open access and open education, it should be taken with a grain of salt. The concepts and current structures in place are still not well researched, given the required time to conduct analysis and scope in the field of education. Educators should refrain from jumping into full implementation without laying the groundwork such as establishing a classroom community or having the technological & pedagogical competency to guide open access learning.

An interesting point was brought up during the video conference this week about who is responsible for teaching digital citizenship. With the prevalence of the internet and social media platforms, it’s not difficult to find an individual’s information such as hobbies, interests, recent likes, etc. What’s concerning is the oversight of how posting such information can be detrimental to their themselves. Recent news reported how an employee lost their job over posting a complaint about their company, through their “anonymous” Twitter account. Growing up, we’re often told the same piece of advice: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything”; which seems to have gone out the window as the plethora of stories about people getting fired over posts continues to grow. Which brings us back to the question of who should be responsible to introduce, remind, and outline online expectations. Being a more recent graduate from the Professional Development Program (PDP), I recall we had several workshops on professional conduct which touched upon the issue of social media presence, as well as further class discussions around concerns over past / present / future social media use. In addition, we were also taught (and repeatedly reminded by the district) that simple things such as photographs with students for yearbook, newsletters, or social media need to be treated carefully due to Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA). In summary, teacher training and school districts have taken some of the responsibility in preparing teachers to recognize (and perhaps demonstrate) digital citizenship. But the next step would be whether it’s a responsibility of the teachers or parents or both to teach students about their digital footprint.

The answer isn’t straightforward as differing opinions or approaches between teachers and parents, combined with some teens’ aversion to risk assessment, results in efforts being non-productive or counter-productive. For example, parents may wish to prevent their children from accessing the internet, which would make it difficult for teachers who wish to introduce them to good practices. Parents (and teachers!) who make an effort to teach about digital literacy can sometimes be counterproductive as the other party does not practice what they preach, or make an effort to remind students to exercise good judgement before making a statement online. There’s also the belief that they cannot be identified, held accountable for their messages, or care enough about the consequences of their actions. All together, it makes the idea of “teaching” digital citizenship similar to teaching math: I can show you all these fancy symbols and numbers… but how likely will you remember any of it?

Thoughts from BlueJeans meeting (Dec 17):

• Classmate mentioned how the article, Pedagogical Models for E-Learning: A Theory-Based Design Framework, seems to suggest pedagogy for online education that are techniques which teachers at brick-and-mortar schools use in their regular class. While I agree this may seem redundant, as responsible educators would include checks and balances of student learning in online course much like the traditional face-to-face classroom, it should not be taken for granted. At the post-secondary level, the course designer and lecturer may be different individuals which would cause the latter to have minimal control over course design; preventing them from adding or editing tasks to provide synchronous meetings or asynchronous discussions. Furthermore, post-secondary lecturers are generally specialists in their field and have not been exposed to teacher training programs to have the background in any pedagogy. Therefore articles such as Dabbagh (2005) helps provide some of these tips and tricks used by every day teachers.
• It was also mentioned how online and face-to-face teaching are not that different if we can simply adapt in-person pedagogy into the online platform. As an online and blended teacher, I would have to disagree with this idea for a multitude of reasons:
  1. The most imperative difference is that online teacher has very limited options to prove who is doing the work. While there is always a mandated in-person assessment, they are far and few in-between. Evidence of learning is a simply an assignment submission with a name on it. I find quizzes are the worst indicators of learning (as a quick self-assessment & feedback) since students can guess their way through, or receive outside help as they’re doing it (speaking from experience as a tutor with 5+ years of experience).
  2. It’s difficult to build a class relations between students-students and student-teacher. Synchronous meetings often works at the post-secondary given the population is self-motivated and is shouldering the cost of education. However, the same cannot be applied to high school or elementary. Often times online students will be cross enrolled or have scheduling conflicts which prevent synchronous meetings, or ignore these opportunities given their lack of motivation and inability to see it’s immediate benefits. With this lack of connection, dialogue between students or with the teacher becomes artificial, and usually devolves into simple completion task.
  3. Some activities are highly difficult to replicate virtually, ie. Labs. While virtual labs are fairly prevalent and the majority are free, their design often follows a pre-determined sequence where students can succeed as long as they follow each step. There is no chance of failure, reflection on sources of error, or at times, consideration of the concept at work in this lab. Another important aspect is the lack of core competencies such as collaboration, personal responsibility (in group work), or social awareness that would be present in a traditional lab activity.
  4. Individualized Educational Plans (IEPs) becomes trickier navigate, in addition to course settings such as progression roadblocks. The student may not have access for support (or perhaps too much, see #1), or the course isn’t user-friendly to those who need scribes or readers. Then there’s the challenge of providing opportunities for (re)assessment when students repeatedly do not show up at arranged times due to health or other reasons. We also have no control over learning environments (or breaks) outside of school that would help improve students learning when they’re studying.
• I find myself quite humbled by the amount of behind-the-scenes work and planning that online/blended teachers need to do in order to have a “successful” course. Even having gone through PDP and learning about different pedagogy and learning theories, much of it is inapplicable (ie. class management) or difficult to effectively transfer  into an online setting (formative assessment). An instructor who is inexperienced with teaching or has only seen (poor) examples of online courses would certainly benefit from articles like Dabbagh (2005).

Thoughts from Dec 10 BlueJeans Meeting:

• Open Educational Resources (OER) from prestigious institutions have better chance of sustaining itself for various reasons. First, it is much easier to publish their materials and have the public subscribe to it using their brand name. Comparatively, smaller institutions and start-ups would struggle with getting recognized, or even just being discovered, given their relative obscurity. Next, they would have a larger (possibly funded!) staff to develop and organize their content on a consistent basis, whereas smaller organizations may be updated less regularly due to work-hobby conflicts. A third point, also related to funding, is that larger corporations can channel funds from other avenues to help sustain operation costs of the OER such as the server equipment or buying materials/content rights.
• Another issue with OERs that was mentioned in our discussion was suggested by Michael, where the material carries institutionalized colonial-era ideologies; that most of it was created by the global north and applied to countries in the global south (Paskevicius, 2019). This poses the issue whereby First Nation’s perspectives and traditions are being minimized while students study content from a settler’s viewpoint instead.
• An interesting point which was brought up was how an OER could potentially begin is by local teachers pooling resources that they use to create a database within the school. It then grows into multi-school program through collaboration and contribution inside the district network infrastructure, and then eventually become a fully public OER. While this wouldn’t solve the issue of First Nation’s knowledge being specific to place (ie, the local environment), it would at least recognize their ways of knowing as it should be embedded within active teachers’ pedagogy.

*Blockquote for future use in Lit Review*

Weller, M. (2018). Twenty Years of Edtech. EDUCAUSE Review, 53(4). Retrieved from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/7/twenty-years-of-edtech

This article provides a summary of main innovations in Educational Technology (EdTech) starting from Wikipedia in the 1990’s to  Blockchains in 2017. The list can be thought of as potential tools for educators looking for to support online / blended classrooms, or to incorporate technology into traditional classrooms in meaningful ways. For instance, Open Education Resources (OER) or Web 2.0 would be a means to provide students with curricular material instead of print-based items which are easily forgotten or damaged.  What’s interesting to note are the more recent (within last 5 years) technology such as learning analytics (collection of student data to supplement learning or intervention), digital badges (which students can accrue as evidence of informal learning), and artificial intelligence (potential tutoring system). An important caveat to the innovations in the article is that their full adoption and integration into education is still a work in progress. In addition, their usefulness in the classroom is also open to debate.

What? What happened? What did you learn? What did you do? What did you expect? What was different? What was your reaction?

• The article lists advances in technology over the last two decades which have the potential to be used for educational purposes. It was interesting to read through some of them and learn about newer ones like AI and Blockchain.
• RSS: aware of its existence, but never tried to utilize it. Seems to be another well-intentioned, poorly executed idea that died off before it took off.
• Blogs: seems to be the most popular option for post-secondary assessment or reading. It’s understandable as they tend to be more readable (less jargon or use excessive academic language), engaging (use of graphics or other media), or relate-able (use of humor, sarcasm, case-studies, etc).
• LMS: utilized of platforms such as Blackboard, Canvas, and EBUS as a leaner. Yet never realized how much work is involved in the creation and operation of the LMS. For example, creating content such as quizzes, tests, rubrics, or lessons, as well as ensuring file cater to software (.pages or .word) or hardware (PC or Mac). I agree with how LMS have become the industry standard of well-executed distance learning format. a properly constructed, user-friendly system can make or break a course. Alternatives such as emailing assignments or reading instructions off a blog feels clunky, and has too many separate pieces which requires users to search high and low for information or documents.

  

• Twitter & Social Media: while it seems to be more “open” in terms of accessibility and interactivity, much of it is still a toxic cesspool which demotivates individuals from participating (constructively).

  

So What? Why does it matter? What are the consequences and meanings of your experiences? How do your experiences link to your academic, professional and/or personal development?

• The summary of currently available tools and helps me identify which pieces are present or absent in my current practice. Since I use the LMS of Moodle to teach blended /online classrooms, it comes equipped with open textbook, digital badges, and learning analytic tools that were mentioned in the reading. To improve my practice, I should try to learn and experiment with these tools as mentioned in the readings. First and foremost would be paying more attention to the learning analytical tools, such as tracking students’ time spent on the course; where are they spending the most time and what is it about those tasks that require so much of their attention and reflection.

  

Now What? What are you going to do as a result of your experiences? What will you do differently? How will you apply what you have learned?

• The take-away from this article is to re-examine my classes to see what aspects I can include or exclude. This is especially true of tools that I’ve avoided (ie. synchronous online meetings?) as I didn’t quite understand what how they are useful for student learning.