Welcome to EDCI 336 – Technology Innovation in Education! I’m looking forward to getting to know each of you as we develop new skills and deepen our understanding of technology in your teaching and learning practice, and help you develop a personal learning network to support your ongoing professional development together over the next three weeks. If you would like to get to know a bit more about me and my background before starting the course, please watch the short video below (4 min).

Topic 1 Learning Objectives:

  • Describe both sides of the debate about the effectiveness of educational technology
  • Start completing weekly class activities and other course assignments when appropriate
  • Describe the course design for EDCI 336 (our class) and the rationale behind this non-traditional course design
  • Learn about the use case of each of the software tools in the course toolset, and describe how each tool can help you successfully complete the course
  • Set up a WordPress blog for your personal blog portfolio
  • Complete a technology Self Assessment survey

Pre-Class Activities:

Review the Course Outline in Brightspace.

  • Please take note of any questions you have before our class time.

To help me get to know you a bit better, please introduce yourself to me by answering the questions in this Brightspace assignment. Please either :

  1. Record a video of yourself answering the questions below in the Brightspace assignment
    – OR –
  2. Type your answers to the questions below and include a picture of yourself
  • Where did you grow up?
  • What are one or two things that you like doing for fun?
  • What grade levels you would like to teach (if you know at this point)?
  • What do you hope to get out of this class?
  • Is there anything else you’d like me to know about you?

Class Time

We will be covering this section and everything that follows during class time, so if you’d like to take a quick look at what we’re going to talk about and do, please go ahead. To be clear we will be working through everything below during class time, so no need to work through anything that follows before our Face-to-Face class time.

The Great Educational Technology Debate (5 min):

HyFlex Instruction Infographic

by Rich McCue

Multi-Access Course Design

  • Multiaccess Learning “refers to a “choice learning” mode where students control how they wish to participate in their course, with a distant small group via video conference or a face-to-face on-campus group, individually via Zoom, or online asynchronously, etc.” (Lakhal & Meyer, 2020)
  • I expect that a few of us will catch a bug at some point this semester, or have other things come up that will prevent us from fully engaging in face-to-face class time. With that in mind, I’ve designed the course curriculum so that we can each engage with it, face-to-face in the classroom, via Zoom, or self-paced when people are feeling better while quarantining. This is a
  • To the right is an infographic I created for a conference presentation on HyFlex use in makerspace instruction, which has some similarities to Multiaccess Learning instructional design.
  • If you come down with any sickness, or something else comes up in your life that prevents you from fully engaging in the course, please let me know as soon as possible so that I can work with you to make sure you successfully complete the course. 

Course Activities in a Nutshell

  • Weekly class, Friday 9:30 AM
  • Weekly updates on your WordPress portfolio curating topics from our course (Assignment 3)
  • Weekly updates on your WordPress portfolio documenting your free inquiry project (Assignment 1) this will start
  • Weekly meeting with your Learning Pod to share the progress of inquiry projects & discuss course topics. You will usually have time at the end of class to do this.
  • Development of an education technology resource & presentation to Learning Pod (Assignment 2)
  • Exploration of social media tools for learning & developing your personal learning network

Review Course Outline expectations, especially the inquiry assignment requirements 

Other Intentional Course Design Decisions

EDCI 336 has been consciously designed to model open learning, inquiry-based learning, & Personal Learning Networks using the following tools:

  • Open course website – No LMS, persistent access and evolving only licensed content
  • Inquiry-driven learning project – flexible outcomes driven by student interest
  • Learner-owned portfolios – to develop open and network literacy, celebrate student work, ensure portability, and maintain ownership
  • Networked portfolios – to aggregate new posts across the network of student portfolios and encourage community and peer review
  • Promote community through discussion – Zoom and Mattermost
  • Invitations to join social media networks and communities
  • Personal Learning Networks
  • Teaching and learning with social media
  • Exploring Professional Blogs/Handles/Tags

EdTech Think-Pair-Share Activity

  • Think of a time when you had a positive or negative learning experience using technology. This could be in school or independently. It could be fully online, mobile, or using technology in the classroom.
  • Think about how the technology impacted your experience either positively or negatively.
  • Decide on a single most important benefit and single most important negative consideration when learning with technology and consider putting this in your blog post for this week.

Hands-on Lab Time

Get your WordPress blog setup (If you already have a blog that you would like to use for EDCI 336, please talk to Rich first before you use it) (30 min):

  1. First review WordPress blog portfolios reading 
  2. Second review past 336 inquiry blogs, for inspiration: one, two, & three
  3. Third review the opened.ca Code of Conduct
  4. Step1: Setup an OpenEd.ca account (but not a website) & Step 2: then request the creation of your portfolio website for the class
  5. Only after your WordPress blog is set up, please complete the Learning Pathways survey (link in the Brightspace post).

Learning Pod Time & Homework

Please note that this is the heaviest week for homework as we get everyone’s personal infrastructure set up for the course. If you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns, please let me know.

  1. Weekly critical reflection. Your blog will be ready for you by the next class for your weekly critical reflection. For this week, please write down some bullet point notes with your reflections to the following questions (but no need to submit them in Brightspace): 
    • What was the process of requesting the set up a WordPress blog like for you?
    • How could blogging be used in teaching and learning?
  2. Please remember to take time for yourself and your health.

References

Lakhal, S., Meyer, F. (2020). Blended Learning. In: Tatnall, A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Education and Information Technologies. Springer, Cham. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/10.1007/978-3-030-10576-1_41