Crafting meaningful reflections for my ePortfolio.
Evidence No.1: Topic Four, Supporting a Learning Journey, Activity #4: Pecha Kucha.
Course outcome: Demonstrate basic competency with design and implementation within a variety of online learning environments and tools AND understand, design and commit to student success in online learning environments.
Pechu Kucha is a medium in which a concept is presented in a concise and fast paced format. For this activity, the projects objective was to promote our thinking of our current and future teaching online. Beginning with the phrase ‘I Imagine …’ a series of slides with images portraying the attributes we associate with online learning were to be presented with associated words. The timing of 10 slides plus the opening slide of ‘I Imagine’ and final slide of ‘I imagine Teaching Online …” was to be set to music. The goal was to create an interesting visual narrative of our perception of teaching online. Images were to be collected from the online source Flicker and references cited.
I am new to the concept of teaching online and always saw it as the delivery of a package. This project helped highlight to me the simple conclusion that more than simple content parallels exist between the traditional and online classroom. Initially I thought that simply pulling a few words together and pasting some appropriate images would not be too difficult and wondered how this would force deeper thought from me regarding the online learning process. I was wrong.
I began with a single word that made me think of student engagement and began an image search. Quickly did I realize that the image was of great personal importance to me, it had to represent the beliefs that I associated word and in the context of my thoughts about online education. Then my second word had me thinking about its relationship to the first, and a theme emerged within the images that made sense to me. More words and images came and then the order needed addressing if the narrative I was trying to convey as to have any real meaning. If this was going to work, I needed to ensure it told my story, not just display a random assortment of words.
We had just completed a collaborative video session where theme was how school kills creativity. It suddenly occurred to me that I could bring my project to life by creating a movie rather than a PowerPoint. I wanted to use effects to draw the viewer into the image and make the words appear so that they were timed with anticipation of the images meaning. I was now really taking ownership of this project. Unfortunately my technical ability has never been much more than the person holding the camera before and this technology was all new to me.
Finally I needed to select a song, and just like the images and words just any song would not do. The more thought and research I put into it led me to ‘Turn On The Sun’ by the Beatles. My presentation was now making sense; I was making meaning of the words, images and songs in relation to my thoughts regarding online education.
The project itself made me think personally about what I wanted to achieve from this program and why. It helped me make the connection that I was collecting the work of others and presenting it as my own in a way that was truly mine in a meaningful way. It showed me that the array of resources available doesn’t have to be a hindrance, but rather an opportunity to expand and follow an idea though to its completion. It allowed me to see that learning can be presented in different ways and that technology, even for me, can provide the opportunity to expand on what I am trying to express. This project, at least for me, highlighted many of the lessons that we have been taught so far, especially that the technology has the ability for us to reach out and collect a great array of resources from other talented people and use various tools to combine them to form a personal meaning about a concept that meets a goal.
Presented with an opportunity students can use a variety of online tools to complete research and how our understanding of student needs can enable us to design activities that use different formats to support and promote their success.
Evidence No.1: Topic Four, Supporting a Learning Journey, Activity #4: Pecha Kucha.
Course outcome: Demonstrate basic competency with design and implementation within a variety of online learning environments and tools AND understand, design and commit to student success in online learning environments.
Pechu Kucha is a medium in which a concept is presented in a concise and fast paced format. For this activity, the projects objective was to promote our thinking of our current and future teaching online. Beginning with the phrase ‘I Imagine …’ a series of slides with images portraying the attributes we associate with online learning were to be presented with associated words. The timing of 10 slides plus the opening slide of ‘I Imagine’ and final slide of ‘I imagine Teaching Online …” was to be set to music. The goal was to create an interesting visual narrative of our perception of teaching online. Images were to be collected from the online source Flicker and references cited.
I am new to the concept of teaching online and always saw it as the delivery of a package. This project helped highlight to me the simple conclusion that more than simple content parallels exist between the traditional and online classroom. Initially I thought that simply pulling a few words together and pasting some appropriate images would not be too difficult and wondered how this would force deeper thought from me regarding the online learning process. I was wrong.
I began with a single word that made me think of student engagement and began an image search. Quickly did I realize that the image was of great personal importance to me, it had to represent the beliefs that I associated word and in the context of my thoughts about online education. Then my second word had me thinking about its relationship to the first, and a theme emerged within the images that made sense to me. More words and images came and then the order needed addressing if the narrative I was trying to convey as to have any real meaning. If this was going to work, I needed to ensure it told my story, not just display a random assortment of words.
We had just completed a collaborative video session where theme was how school kills creativity. It suddenly occurred to me that I could bring my project to life by creating a movie rather than a PowerPoint. I wanted to use effects to draw the viewer into the image and make the words appear so that they were timed with anticipation of the images meaning. I was now really taking ownership of this project. Unfortunately my technical ability has never been much more than the person holding the camera before and this technology was all new to me.
Finally I needed to select a song, and just like the images and words just any song would not do. The more thought and research I put into it led me to ‘Turn On The Sun’ by the Beatles. My presentation was now making sense; I was making meaning of the words, images and songs in relation to my thoughts regarding online education.
The project itself made me think personally about what I wanted to achieve from this program and why. It helped me make the connection that I was collecting the work of others and presenting it as my own in a way that was truly mine in a meaningful way. It showed me that the array of resources available doesn’t have to be a hindrance, but rather an opportunity to expand and follow an idea though to its completion. It allowed me to see that learning can be presented in different ways and that technology, even for me, can provide the opportunity to expand on what I am trying to express. This project, at least for me, highlighted many of the lessons that we have been taught so far, especially that the technology has the ability for us to reach out and collect a great array of resources from other talented people and use various tools to combine them to form a personal meaning about a concept that meets a goal.
Presented with an opportunity students can use a variety of online tools to complete research and how our understanding of student needs can enable us to design activities that use different formats to support and promote their success.
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Evidence No.2: Delivery Models and Student Engagement – Towards Best Practice. Activity #5; Annotated Bibliography.
Course outcome: Critically assess and evaluate resources in online learning.
An annotated bibliography, simply put, is a list of books, journals or other works that includes a narrative, or annotation. Its purpose is to advise the reader of the works content and relevance regarding a specific topic. Here we had to research and annotate 5 works and provide summaries of their content. Using the university library databases, such as EBSCOHost, searches were completed to find academic pieces to be reviewed. The RefWorks program was used to create references for the bibliography in the APA format. My selected topic focused on student engagement.
I never knew that there was so much research and information regarding ‘modern’ online learning. Not only did this project highlight to me another way to have students investigate resources, it enabled me to gain a better understating of the scale that online education has and will have in the future of education. And it did all of this with a focus that drew my attention to a specific goal. The project allowed me to peruse specific articles that were of interest to me and learn new ideas and concepts whilst I searched for my 5 articles.
I personally followed a theme of student engagement that led me to research and papers that focused on higher education. These papers discussed the engagement of university students in online and compared them to blended and traditional classrooms.
Upon reflection I was drawn to this as I interested in how the ideas surrounding engagement at the higher level could be applied to lower grades. In addition, I have always been interested in student engagement, especially where it involves the intentional non-learner.
As I think about how projects in an online environment can be molded to the needs of the students whilst meeting the goals of the course, it becomes clearer to me that open ended projects that empower the student to drive their learning and seeks out areas of interest to them empower them to connect with material, develop their knowledge and still achieve the overriding goal sought by the teacher. This project enabled me to review a number of online resources both for research and product production as well as review the resources available to me as a professional directly relating to this program.
Course outcome: Critically assess and evaluate resources in online learning.
An annotated bibliography, simply put, is a list of books, journals or other works that includes a narrative, or annotation. Its purpose is to advise the reader of the works content and relevance regarding a specific topic. Here we had to research and annotate 5 works and provide summaries of their content. Using the university library databases, such as EBSCOHost, searches were completed to find academic pieces to be reviewed. The RefWorks program was used to create references for the bibliography in the APA format. My selected topic focused on student engagement.
I never knew that there was so much research and information regarding ‘modern’ online learning. Not only did this project highlight to me another way to have students investigate resources, it enabled me to gain a better understating of the scale that online education has and will have in the future of education. And it did all of this with a focus that drew my attention to a specific goal. The project allowed me to peruse specific articles that were of interest to me and learn new ideas and concepts whilst I searched for my 5 articles.
I personally followed a theme of student engagement that led me to research and papers that focused on higher education. These papers discussed the engagement of university students in online and compared them to blended and traditional classrooms.
Upon reflection I was drawn to this as I interested in how the ideas surrounding engagement at the higher level could be applied to lower grades. In addition, I have always been interested in student engagement, especially where it involves the intentional non-learner.
As I think about how projects in an online environment can be molded to the needs of the students whilst meeting the goals of the course, it becomes clearer to me that open ended projects that empower the student to drive their learning and seeks out areas of interest to them empower them to connect with material, develop their knowledge and still achieve the overriding goal sought by the teacher. This project enabled me to review a number of online resources both for research and product production as well as review the resources available to me as a professional directly relating to this program.
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