Author Archives: meganelliott

Feb 27 2020
(11) 5332, Uncategorized

EDTECH IS MORE THAN KAHOOT

In this post for #UWINDIG2020, I will dive into the Technologist Module by Ontario Extend. This resource is a form of open education, which allows us to interact with Professional Learning Networks (PLN’s) and gain knowledge from free, collective resources made by educators, for educators, around the world. By writing this blog post, I hope to contribute something valuable to this PLN, and learn how to be intentional with my technological choices in the classroom.

I chose to develop a Twitter Essay for my offering, which was a surprisingly difficult process. As an avid twitter user in my youth, I thought it would be easier to formulate coherent tweets in 280 characters or less, with appropriate visual additions. It’s safe to say I was wrong. However, I had fun with it, and found myself laughing while picking from the culturally-relevant GIF’s.

The Design Thinking process was easy to follow, and is a good addition to the SAMR framework proposed in class. Design Thinking focuses on being learner-centered and receiving feedback along the way, while ensuring that learning outcomes are still being met. Thus, the new, carefully-curated technological offering, is likely to be a Modification or Redefinition of a previous task. The point that stood out for me here was empathizing – responding to the real needs of students.

Most of my classmates (and teachers) have heard me express my own frustrations with educators and administrators failing to listen to the needs of students. Frivolous projects that students did not ask for (cough, Math Proficiency Test), are unfortunately prevalent in our Education system. That’s why I was so glad to see Ontario Extend thoroughly involve learners in the design process. This can be accomplished by completing an empathy map, which is often used by entrepreneurs for new business ventures. I completed one of these in a Creative Entrepreneurship class that I took, but have never thought about their affordances in education before!

An Empathy Map from Solutions IQ that’s a little cuter than the one in the Module (because I’m Type A).

Defining a learner challenge requires educators to admit that there may be better way of doing things. This may be the hardest part for most educators, as many remain stuck in their ways. They also may not see a need to change their format if content is getting covered.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”

To me, the first indication that change is needed is that students are bored, unmotivated or restless in a class. The students in my first practicum class (Grade 11 Chemistry) seemed disengaged from their learning, but I felt hopeless about how to meaningfully integrate technology. If only I had this module sooner!

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

Ideating using mind maps is important, but (hopefully) most educators have been using this concept for the duration of their career. How else would I get through this multimedia reflection?

The real task is picking an EdTech tool that works for your learner challenge. In class, we discussed considering the affordances and implications of different platforms. The tool should also be appropriate to the task at hand. Dr. Tony Bates describes criteria to consider in a concise way in his SECTIONS model below.

Next, educators develop a Prototype of their technological offering, and Share it with students. Again, I love that students are centered at every point in the design process since they know best what’s right for them.

The Module ends by directing educators to set a clear path for students to navigate the technological tool, and relating the activity back to the curriculum. At least for me, this part seems the most straightforward, as I’ve frequently practiced giving clear directions and detailing curriculum expectations in my lesson plans.

Overall, I definitely learned something about education, but I mainly realized the major links between digital pedagogy and digital entrepreneurship. Creative offerings for businesses require the same basic processes – maybe the Faculty of Education should start teaching business classes!

If you want to see more of my tweets, you can find them here.

Thanks for reading,

Megan Elliott

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Oct 03 2019
3 Comments
(11) 5332

GO BIG OR GO HOME

I listened to Questioning Learning by Chris Friend and Amy Collier.

Collier utilizes critical pedagogy, pointing out several aspects of the education system that educators have an opportunity to improve. I created the infographic below, which compares teaching practices that Collier condemns, and tenets she recommends in their place.

An infographic summarizing Friend and Collier’s podcast, created on Canva.

I used Canva to create my offering. Canva is a template-based graphics website which allows users to customize a variety of documents. My experience with Canva was positive – I was able to pick a visually appealing template and extensively customize my offering by choosing fonts, icons, colours, and rearranging the template itself. Tools are what you make of them, and Canva is definitely a tool with room for creativity, although I can see why some users may fail to customize pre-existing templates, resorting to a “Drag and drop” experience.

RISK IT ALL

What really spoke to me about the podcast was Collier’s idea of risk. In terms of the student-teacher relationship, both should be “all-in” in terms of risk. In other words – go big or go home! De-risking learning would be like de-risking snowboarding – there may be no risk of failure, but the chances of achieving something incredible are now slim.

via GIPHY

What’s more, without risk, there is no excitement, passion, or joy. The idea of beacons, rather than learning goals, also encompasses this tenet of risk. Ask yourself – what would I be blown away by if my students were to achieve it by the end of the term? This is where the bar should be set for student learning.

The process of creation for this assignment incorporated a great deal of risk. Students in our classroom were experimenting with a variety of new technologies and demonstrating a unique way of expressing thoughts. We had a general idea of what to do, but a great deal of wiggle room in how we ultimately tackled the assignment. It was daunting. It was difficult. But this risk is what will create exciting, creative, unique learning opportunities.

OPPORTUNITY VS BROKENNESS

Friend and Collier also focused in on a language of opportunity within education rather than a language of brokenness. With critical pedagogy becoming more popular, we need to be careful that we are criticizing educational practices in a constructive way. A language of brokenness when speaking of the education system does not acknowledge all those who are doing great things already.


via MEME

Diane Ravitch, the former US Assistant Secretary of Education and a powerful advocate for Educational Reform, echoes similar thoughts as Collier. A language of opportunity provides room to grow, while also acknowledging that the system already contains effective practices and exceptional educators.

Questioning Learning ultimately influenced me to think critically about best practices that are continually reinforced within my pre-service education, such as student learning outcomes. I hope to develop my own educational philosophy which will be centred around critical pedagogy and risk-taking.

Thanks for reading,

Megan Elliott