Category: TIEgrad (Page 2 of 7)

Down the Rabbit Hole Again….

July 17, 2020 / lhuston

neon sign that says down the rabbit hole.

A neon sign that says ” down the rabbit hole”

Down the rabbit hole again….

So, it happened, again. I set out once more to find just a couple of articles on a topic I was considering for an upcoming assignment, determined that I would be focused and efficient. Then, I fell into the rabbit hole; in the words of Robert Frost ,“way leads on to way/I doubted if I should ever come back”. But come back I did, with a slew of interesting articles. My purpose here is to use this post to disentangle and make sense of some of the research found, aspiring to simultaneously uncover a focus and direction.

Resource #1

Guiding Principles for Collaborative Learning. This government webpage outlines the who, why and what of collaborative learning. As cited in this document, collaborative learning is defined by Smith and MacGregor (1992) as:

“Collaborative learning” is an umbrella term for a variety of educational approaches involving joint intellectual effort by students, or students and teachers together. Usually, students are working in groups of two or more, mutually searching for understanding, solutions, or meanings, or creating a product. Collaborative learning activities vary widely, but most center on students’ exploration or application of the course material, not simply the teacher’s presentation or explication of it” (p. 1)

Some of the key connected theorists mentioned within this document are Dewey, Vygotsky, Bruner, Bloom and Slavin.

Resource #2

From Knowledge to Wisdom: Critical evaluation in New Literacy Instruction

This 2012 article, by Phil Nichols, I found interesting as it discusses the use of technology in the classroom. It draws on the idea that often technology is used just for the sake of using it and thus lacks purpose. Nichols includes ideas on how to use technology purposefully, in ways that will create transferable skills. This article may help with creating ideas on how to use technology with purpose within collaborative online spaces.

Resource #3

Moving beyond the predictable failure of Ed-Tech initiatives

Sancho-Gil J.M, Rivera-Vargas, P & Miño-Puigcercós, R (2020) looked at the implementation of Ed Tech initiatives, “arguing against a reductionist notion of ‘technology’ and its perverse effects on education” (p. 71) . They go on to say that, this, “disregards the complex fabric of technology” (p. 71). Technology and it’s uses, now more than ever, should be included thoughtfully. This article outlines some of the specific issues, illuminating some considerations that should be taken when including technology.

Resource #4

How Digital and Oral Peer Feedback Improves High School Students’ Written Argumentation—A Case Study Exploring the Effectiveness of Peer Feedback in Geography

Morawski, M and Budke, A (2019) found, as one of the results of their study, that peer feedback is accurate, which “suggests that one could hand over more responsibility in terms of feedback to the students” ( p.21). This finding and the study are interesting in that they investigate assessment strategies, technology and collaboration.

Resource#5

“To Be, or Not to Be”: Modernizing Shakespeare With Multimodal Learning Stations

As an English teacher who loves Shakespeare, I was interested in this 2019 article by Harvey M,. Deuel, A. & Marlatt, R. as it looked at using technology to make Shakespeare more accessible to students. It would be interesting to take some of these ideas and look at how they could be applied in an online environment.

Resource #6

Becoming Inquirers: A Review of Research on Inquiry Methods in Literacy Preservice Teacher Preparation, Literacy Research and Instruction

This 2020 review by Lammert, C. is interesting in that it looks at literacy and examines the use of collaboration, a natural part of Inquiry. It includes many connections to the theories of Dewey.

Resource #7

Writing on Social Media: a Review of Research in the High School Classroom

This 2020 review by Galvin, S., and Greenhow, C, connects to both collaboration and technology. Oh, did I mention this was the area I was looking for research in? The review includes technology that could be used collaboratively in the online environment. Some of the examples shared as part of the review are blogs, storyboard, collaborative writing, wiki’s, forum’s, Google +, closed Facebook groups and Edmodo (to name a few). The positives as well as concerns connected to the implementation and use of social media are discussed.

Resource #8

Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum

This blog post, by Dave, contains the contents of a previously published paper that discusses learning and curriculum as a metaphor; the rhizome.

“In the rhizomatic view, knowledge can only be negotiated, and the contextual, collaborative learning experience shared by constructivist and connectivist pedagogies is a social as well as a personal knowledge-creation process with mutable goals and constantly negotiated premises”.

Dave explores concepts within this metaphor connected to knowledge and education. There are many connections to both technology and collaboration/social learning.

Resource #9

Chapter 12 from How We Teach Now: The GSTA Guide to Student-Centered Teaching

Chapter 12: Cooperative and Collaborative Learning: Getting the Best of Both Words

This chapter, by Sawyer,J., and Obeiddiscusses, R. discusses the benefits and uses of cooperative learning and collaboration (inquiry, project based learning) and includes examples of their uses in collaborative oral presentations, literature analysis and video discussions.

Resource #10

Nahachewsky, J. & Slomp, D. (2009). Sound and Fury: Studied response(s) of curriculum and classroom in digital times.

This final article, one of the readings for this week, also includes connections that can be used to consider the use of technology for collaboration.

While creating this post and reading through these articles, I began to see many interconnected points. Collaboration, a key strategy considered within B.C’s curriculum contains within it and through its uses, a means to provide student centred learning/ personalization, community building/ social learning, and can link to purposeful uses of technology. I believe I have, after all, uncovered a focus and direction.

“Onward and Upward”

– C. S Lewis

Photo by Haley Lawrence on Unsplash

Metaphors of Curriculum

July 13, 2020 / lhuston

Metaphors of Curriculum

Lego

COVID has created a lot of open space in my home and as a result has led to the exploration of toys long forgotten and the creation of new games. One such exploration led to the dusting off of bins and bins of Lego. Perhaps the spilling of bins all over the floor, dust billowing into the air, is a more accurate description. My daughter, having shown no interest in the past, was suddenly spending hours laying on the floor of her room creating all sorts of imaginary places and spaces along with wildly designed ships and cars. My older son, used to following the labelled instructions, the box with the desired outcome displayed in bright color planted in front of him, watched from the sidelines, glancing over once in a while but making it clear that he was invested in other activities. One morning, my son came bounding downstairs, a contraption in his hand and joy spilled all over his face. “Look mom!” Look what I built! There in his hand, a battleship of the likes I had never seen before. Enthusiastically, he began detailing each part, explaining how they worked and declaring that this creation could actually fly. Taking in a final gulp of air, he then, with pride in his voice, told me how he had built this on his own; without any instructions. The next number of days were spent creating and recreating ships, towns, and many other structures both on his own and with his sister. I would now often see the two of them laying on the floor, heads together, creating worlds that can only be conquered up through the brilliance of childhood imagination. A month later, faced with the task of describing what curriculum is, the first thing that popped into my head was Lego.

Curriculum is Lego. It arrives in a nice package, clearly labelled with the age it is suited for, a clear set of instructions inside and the outcome plastered on the outside of the box. Curriculum and Lego both contain a limited variety of sets and series, what is to be learned is decided by the manufacturer; similar to the players that determine curriculum (Blades, 1995). While at first this curriculum may seem rigid and inflexible as learners follow the instructions precisely to make just one thing, it is easy to see that the potential is there to create anything. Lego and the curriculum are both rigid and flexible, both organized and messy.

Both the rigidity and the flexibility serve me well as a teacher. They allow me to give students the freedom to explore, but also, create structure; the building of knowledge and skills. This knowledge/skill may be learnt by following the step by step instructions, by receiving help and guidance, by learning how to put the blocks together and take them apart. My daughter, while clearly engaged in playing with the Lego, built ships that consisted of a few blocks, most of the beauty was in her imagination. Conversely, my son, an experienced Lego builder, was able to take the knowledge and skills previously learnt through building with step by step instructions/adult guidance and apply them to create a complex structure.

Connected to the flexibility of the curriculum is the idea that students should be given some say within their learning. Egan (2003) discusses the beliefs of Rosseau and Dewey in connection with the curriculum in regards to “the belief that children are naturally good……[and thus] children’s own interests should be allowed to decide at least some part of what their curriculum should contain”(p13). This was shown when both my son and daughter chose to create their own curriculum by building freely without instructions or specific directions. I became the facilitator, there to help (primarily with separating blocks determined to be one), to guide if needed and to be a sounding board.

Rewind and Reflect

When I first started teaching, I had no idea of the broad knowledge I would come to have connected to curriculum. My initial plan to teach grade 4/5 forever, soon dissolved as I landed my first permanent teaching job in a K-9 distributed learning school in Langley, BC. At this school, formerly called Lochiel U-Connect, I taught every subject imaginable from grade 2-9, (oh, the stories I could tell) and assessed students in every subject area from K-9. I would say I became very quickly versed in all curriculum areas across these grade levels in a very short amount of time. As a new teacher, I found the checklists of outcomes comforting when it came to teaching and assessing student work. I also very quickly found ways to use the curriculum to help families build projects across grade levels and I realized it was okay if some of the boxes did not get ticked. In 2013, a new principal and some brainstorming led to the further expansion of our school as we added Grade 10 followed by Grade 11 and then Grade 12. Suddenly I found myself teaching high school English and as we grew further, moved locations and changed names, I became a high school teacher. Currently, I teach English (8-12), Musical Theatre (K-12) and Foods (11/12) in a blended/distributed learning environment at a school now simply referred to as U-Connect. I still like curriculum documents, I like that there is a guide for each grade, each subject area, but I have come to realize that within the structure of these documents, there is a lot of flexibility. Each bin (subject) and the pieces (curricular competencies/content) within it can be pulled apart, mixed and built in many different ways, can include voice and choice, and can be combined with content from other bins. What struck me, after reading Blade’s metaphorical analysis in “Procedures of Power in a Curriculum Discourse: Conversations From Home”, was the realization that when it comes to curriculum, I have given little, if any, thought to the powers behind the curriculum, to what is included and why. One sentence that really resonated with me was when Blade (1995) stated, “Foucault suggested to me a way to begin this journey of change: if we understand how the systems in which we live and form act to exclude and limit possibilities, then perhaps possibilities for change might be revealed (pp.129-130). I now wonder, does the current curriculum “act to exclude and limit possibilities?”

What then is curriculum to me?

So, how do I define curriculum? Egan (2003) posed some questions about what curriculum is when he stated:

At the superficial level, confusion about what curriculum is, and thus what people concerned with it should do, involves argument about whether curriculum subsumes instruction – and thus whether a student of curriculum should also be a student of instructional methods – or whether curriculum involves all learning experiences, or refers simply to a blueprint for achieving restricted objectives in a school setting, or includes the statement of objectives as well, or also the evaluation of their achievement, and so on (pp 9-10).

After wrestling with some of the ideas here, my definition of curriculum as a teacher would include the curricular competencies/content (“the what” as defined by Egan, 2003) but would include more than just that, as the instructional methods (“the how” as defined by Egan, 2003) is also important. To me “curriculum subsumes instruction” (Egan, 2003, p 9) and involves all learning experiences; the curriculum documents simply function as a guideline for the curriculum in my classroom.

Perhaps someone who is writing curriculum is only concerned with “the what” based on what it is believed students should be learning and when they should be learning it.

Perhaps a student of instructional methods is focused on “the how”.

Perhaps to ease inquiry and research, these both function well as separate entities.

But as a teacher, I cannot include only one or the other, or parts of each because what I teach, my curriculum, includes all aspects. When I now reflect back on the metaphor I chose for curriculum, the Lego, I see that this metaphor, in many ways, includes only part of my definition for curriculum. Without the teacher, without the student, it is merely a box with a fancy label, blocks and instructions. It is the sum of all of these parts that creates curriculum, that creates what one may see or experience when walking into classroom.

References

Blades, D. (1995) Procedures of Power in a Curriculum Discourse: Conversations from Home.

JCT, 11(4), 125-155.

Egan, K. (2003) What is Curriculum? JCACS, 1(1), 9-16.

https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/viewFile/16845/15651

What a Year

July 9, 2020 / lhuston

What a year this has been. It was certainly a memorable one and one that has changed not only the fabric of our society, but each individual in its own way. When I reflect on the whirlwind that began just before Spring Break, I am in awe of the resiliency of teachers, students and parents as they each adjusted to navigate through unfamiliar territory. What I hope for, is that this has created change, permanent change that will positively affect the way we move forward. The uncomfortable and alien situations all of us were forced into has created growth and perhaps a realization that we are stronger than we believed and that we could take on and face more challenges than we thought possible. In a world where perfection is often quested for, we learnt to fail, again and again. We learnt how to be vulnerable as we took on new roles, new technology and new ways of teaching; some of which were successful and many that were not. We tried and learnt new ways of doing things, we collaborated, we leaned on each other and we built community in new ways that we had not envisioned before.

I am excited for the future, for what the fall will bring; excited to try out new ways of teaching and learning and to have the summer to reflect, learn and build.

To dare greatly.

It is not the critic who counts; not… [those] who point out how the strong… stumble, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to…[ those] who are actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if… [they] fail, at least fail while daring greatly.

Theodore Roosevelt

Header Image by Comfreak from Pixabay

Exploring Curriculum

July 8, 2020 / lhuston

Image by kalhh from Pixabay

A definition:

Curriculum:

A nasty word conjuring up images of desks placed in isolation, checklists and a hurry up and finish mentality. Something that interferes with exploration and the natural processes of learning, creativity and curiosity.

This week we started exploring What is curriculum? and I found myself pleasantly surprised with the actual ambiguity of a term I had long considered to be rigid and fixed. While the definition I propose above does not account for all of my experiences with curriculum, it surely comprised the vast majority of my early teaching experiences. I recall the checklist of outcomes I ran through, determined that all students should encounter each one before the end of the school year. After a few years as a teacher, my mentality around this began to change, and with the introduction of the newest curriculum, this changed even further. However, restraints are still there and I began to question the checklist even further during the time of COVID teaching and again after viewing one of the readings for the week by Egan, “Learning in Depth in a Franciscan Friary cell”. In this blog post, Egan discusses the idea of Learning in Depth ( LiD) and reflects on his life experiences as a Franciscan novice in connection to this concept. The quote Egan used, by Thomas à Kempis, to encapsulate this experience into a singular sentences was “Your cell, if you consistently work in it, becomes sweet, but if you keep not to it, it becomes tedious and distasteful.” What Egan proposes is that time spent learning in depth allows learners to explore a topic in great detail leading to further interest and it thus “becomes sweet”. The opposite, which is often the case when checking off boxes, is that learners do not have the time to explore topics in depth and rather send time skimming the surface. This may result in learning (can we call this learning?) that feels “tedious and distasteful” as opposed to joyful.

Given this, how can one not want to include LiD within their curriculum? Do we as teachers not strive to create learning experiences such as these for our students? Can LiD and curriculum exist simultaneously? Is curriculum only defined by ministry documents, or is the scope larger than that? Curious, I spent a few minutes exploring some of the introductions within some of the Ministry documents. One notable quote from the ELA 8 document is the statement that “The components of the curriculum work together in a dynamic and flexible way to support deeper learning”. While this is included within the introduction for this particular course, I’m curious about how often this is considered within course planning and whether the content allows for the time needed to create deep learning.

Currently, I am working with another teacher to create a cross-curricular (that word again!) grade 8 and 9 blended humanities course where student learning would take place as a continuum over the two years and where the combining of courses and curriculum would create an environment that would allow students to both develop the skills (content) required as well as the time and opportunity to learn in depth. Our hope is that the design will create opportunities for students to experience the “sweetness” of deep learning.

I now take leave of this space to continue my muddling through other ideas connected to curriculum and teaching.

Ethical Dilemmas

April 19, 2020 / lhuston

Image from Pixabay

One of my big passion areas is ethics and the ethical dilemmas we continuously face both as educators and citizens living in todays ubiquitous age of technology. So, when scanning through some of the readings for the week, I was immediately drawn to the topic of social media and education. Do we embrace the pervasive nature of social media and utilize it to further enhance our teaching and the learning done by students, or are we jumping on a bandwagon too fast without a thorough understanding of the ramifications this could have. What are the true benefits of using social media? What are the true costs? Do the benefits outweigh the costs in such a significant manner that they need to be included? Are we unable to provide a meaningful educational experience without the use of social media?

To be clear, my concerns are primarily directed towards the K-12 educational system as it is my belief that post secondary ethics are a different beast than the ethics that need to be considered within a K-12 system. My objective, therefore, for this post, is to explore these ideas further in connection to research on either side, perhaps to come to a conclusion. Hopefully to further discussion and debate around these ideas.

The topic for my blog post was sparked while reading through, “Social media in K-12 schools”. This blog post, by Rothwell, D. (2017) discusses the potential benefits of using social network sites (SNS) in education, the minimal use of SNS in education and the lack of understanding by teachers with regards to; if they should use it and if they do use it, how to use it effectively. The big question asked was:

“Should school policies be framed in safety (to monitor and block student access to new technologies) or should policies be framed in media literacy (to integrate and teach students how to utilize new technologies within the classroom)?”

What a great question!

According to the research they examined, there are benefits to using SNS:

The supporting of “collaborative knowledge construction”
“Timely access to information” and “academic help-seeking”
The “development of communication competencies”
“Blurring the lines between learning, social, and leisure spaces” (Intro; para 2)

However, the benefits discussed with regards to learning in an informal environment were mixed, with some studies recording positive results and others recording negative results, due to its ability to distract students.

Within a formal learning environment, the studies reported on showed positive results, however they noted that less than a third of teachers “integrated SNS into their teaching” (Section 2).

With regards to connecting students pervasive learning, connecting at school and at home learning, the research indicated that students would benefit from using SNS and would experience higher levels of engagement. However, teachers primarily used social media for “grade management and submission of assignments” ( Section 3).

Both pre-service and in-service teachers seemed to exhibit a willingness to try to incorporate these technologies; however, it seems that the training that may be required is lacking.

Within their conclusions they noted that while the benefits to using SNS has been recorded, little data/research exists on the “social impact of SNS” and there were few studies that established that the use of SNS increases student learning. I imagine Clark would have a few words to say about this. In fact, they noted that a current hole in the research is that there are no studies that show, ” ‘best practices’ for integrating this social media into pedagogy, tied to student learning outcomes” (Greenhow & Askari., 2017, p. 642).

So my takeaway from this is that while there are potential benefits to using SNS, there is little research to fully support the use of it at this time and little training to teach teachers how to use it in a manner that will increase student learning and engagement. Is this then just another “technology push” that will lead to teachers adding tech just for the sake of adding tech? Is this another strategy that may or may not be effective for already overworked teachers to try to figure out? Or is there, in fact, a whole avenue for student learning that has yet to be throughly explored? If we choose to explore this avenue, what are the potential ramifications?

This segways nicely into a discussion on ethics and SNS. While I wish I had more time to delve deeply into this research, I chose one article that seemed appropriate. Written by Keith Howard (2013), the article “Using Facebook and Other SNSs in K-12 Classrooms: Ethical Considerations for Safe Social Networking” discusses some of the very topics that we as educators should be concerned about. Howard examines the risks through “the lens of Moor’s (1999) just-consequentialist theory” (p40). Howard discusses and acknowledges the benefits of using SNS in the classroom as well as the differences in understanding between the students (digital natives) and the teachers (digital immigrants). Howard notes that while the use of SNS may lead to students who are more prepared to live and work in the 21st Century there are associated risks, as there is the potential for, ” SNS to provide an avenue for bullies, pedophiles, and other antisocial individuals to gain access to students who, while digital natives with technology, may be naive and unsuspecting from a social standpoint” (42). He then goes on to discuss the risks that may occur if SNS are not included in the classroom stating, “if schools block access,….only those with home access to the Internet will be in a position to develop proficiency in using them, leaving an element of the digital divide intact” (42). Below are some of Howard’s arguments for the use of SNS in education followed by some identified risks.

Benefits of use:

Teacher’s have the opportunity to instruct and guide students in the appropriate use of SNS.
Teachers can instruct students on the ” how to’s” of building an online identity.
The use of SNS can create deeper engagement and higher order thinking skills.

Risks of use:

Psychological safety
1. Offensive content (while blocked at schools, can be encountered at home) I wonder…How do we ensure that filters are set up in homes?
2. The self-regulation nature of many SNS. It is left up to the individual to “report threats, promotions of self-harm, bullying and harassment, hate speech, sex and nudity and violations of identity privacy” (p 45). In addition, while SNS sites may remove offensive images, text etc after the fact, students have already viewed them and the damage is still done. With school districts lacking control over these sites, how do we protect kids? Howard mentions the use of education specific sites as possible alternatives; however, this does not take away from the exposure of students to offensive content found in the SNS they use at home on their own time.
Appropriateness of student-teacher interactions.
1. The use of SNS opens up more opportunities for inappropriate communication. This can be teacher to student OR student to teacher OR student to student. When student to student interactions at home occur using SNS, is it the schools responsibility to step in if the use of SNS is promoted? Or is it a parenting responsibility? What about the right to free speech?
Protection of privacy.
1. The use of SNS may lead to the sharing, OR “unintended sharing of information with unknown people” (49).

Howard’s concluding thoughts are connected to the following:

1. How to prepare whilst protecting.

2. How to prepare teachers.

3. Implementing policies.

4. Weighing the risk and reward.

Overall, between these two readings, it seems fairly clear that many of the risks can be mitigated and the rewards are many. However, if teachers are not properly prepared, if students do not have internet access/technology at home or do not have filtering settings on their home devices, (and this doesn’t even address phones), if school districts do not implement policies that keep students safe but also allow for the development of necessary skills, the benefits may be small and the risks large.

When going back to the original question posed in Rothwell’s (2017) blog,

I wonder if it has to be one or the other. I wonder if aspects of both should be included. Part of ensuing the safety of our students is making sure that we teach students how to navigate and effectively use the SNS that they are already investing so much of their time in; teaching students safeguards, teaching them that SNS are more than just a place to post engineered pictures and to give and receive likes and that they are places to engage, to learn, to inspire and to potentially evoke change. Perhaps, I as a digital immigrant, do not have the capability to see or understand technology in the same manner as my students. Perhaps students as digital natives, do not understand the potential risks of their SNS usage; perhaps they don’t understand the impact it can have on relationships, self-esteem/mental health and their understanding of the world around them.

What may be deemed a much larger concern, one that I started to wonder about as I read through these articles, is the potential for the further use of technology in our teaching, including SNS, to increase the digital divide. While Howard (2013) might argue that including this in our teaching decreases the digital divide, given the ubiquity of technology, students who only have access at school to a technology designed for use both in formal and formal learning situations will still be at a great disadvantage. It is evident, in our current COVID 19 educational system that those who have technology access have a huge advantage over those who do not, and this divide has been further exacerbated. Perhaps we should be more concerned about addressing the digital divide issue rather than the issue of to use or not use SNS in our teaching.

Below I have included a few other connected articles and a video that piqued my interest. ……..Perhaps the makings of a future blog post…….

Rowsell, J., Morrell, E., & Alvermann, D. E. (2017). Confronting the digital divide: Debunking brave new world discourses. The Reading Teacher, 71(2), 157-165. doi:10.1002/trtr.1603

Van Den Beemt, A., Thurlings, M & Willems, M. (2020) Towards an understanding of social media use in the classroom: a literature review, Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 29:1, 35-55, DOI: 10.1080/1475939X.2019.1695657

References

Greenhow, C. & Askari, E. (2017). Learning and teaching with social network sites: A decade of research in K-12 related education. Education and Information Technologies, 22(2), 623-645. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Emilia_Askari/publication/284232937_Learning_and_teaching_with_social_network_sites_A_decade_of_research_in_K-12_related_education/links/5723690c08aef9c00b81124a/Learning-and-teaching-with-social-network-sites-A-decade-of-research-in-K-12-related-education.pdf

Howard, K. E. (2013). Using Facebook and other SNSs in k-12 classrooms: Ethical considerations for safe social networking. Issues in Teacher Education, 22(2), 39-54.

Rothwell, D. (2017). Social Media in K-12 Schools. BOLT Multi-authored Blog. [Weblog]. Retrieved from http://bolt.athabascau.ca/index.php/2017/09/01/social-media-in-k-12-schools/

Awesome Things

April 12, 2020 / lhuston

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

This week’s post will be short, for now. After spending some time considering what to write about, I have decided to include some awesome things from this week, as many weeks in my present history have not been so awesome. The inspiration for the use of the word awesome, is a book I have shared with my students, a book writen by Neil PasrichaI , called, “The Book of Awesome”

Awesome Thing #1:

Communicating with a student through Moodle messages and creating a plan to help them successfully pass term one of a course that they have been unable to achieve success with in the past. The same student completing the work and checking in to see if they needed to complete anything else. And finally, this student completing enough work to pass term one of the course! AWESOME!

Awesome Thing #2

Persistently calling a family and finally having them reach out and as a result being able to offer and send them help for some of their needs. Receiving an e-mail from them with the comment, ” Your thoughtfulness and caring has brought me to tears”. This brought me to tears! So many people around the world are doing this kind of Awesome work right now. It is AWESOME!

Awesome Thing #3

Completely re-vamping our project so that we are now working on a, ” How to Support At home Learning with Digital Tools” project that will incorporate stories from the perspectives of teachers, parents and students. It’s going to be AWESOME!

Awesome Thing #4

In class this week we discussed privacy and security and ethics connected to using technology. This was just the conversation we needed as we had been talking about this with regards to our project. This gave us some ideas to build off of, consider and use. How AWESOME is that!

I have also include the reading and a connected blog post. I would like to get some of my students discussing some of the ethical challenges presented within these and plan to set up a forum for them to share their thoughts and respond to others ideas.

Regan, P., & Jesse, J. (2019). Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: Twenty-first century student sorting and tracking. Ethics and Information Technology, 21(3), 167-179. DOI: 10.1007/s10676-018-9492-2

Maciej Cegłowski An AWESOME Blog post!

Awesome Thing #5

Balloons. They have been a source of physical activity, science and art for my kids this week. AWESOME!

Awesome Thing #6

My family and friends are all healthy and safe. Truly AWESOME!