Welcome to IED 336 – Technology Innovation in Indigenous Education! I’m looking forward to getting to know each of you as we develop new skills, deepen our understanding of the appropriate uses 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.

Topic 1 Learning Objectives

  • Create a sketchnote with pen and paper to help students remember new words
  • Describe both sides of the debate about the effectiveness of educational technology
  • Describe the course design for 336 and the rationale behind the course design choices
  • Describe use cases for each of the software tools in the course toolset, and describe how each tool can help you successfully complete the course
  • Identify major positives and negative experiences learners sometimes have when using educational technologies
  • Setup your personal blog where you will reflect on the usefulness of the technologies and teaching methods we will cover each day
  • Complete the Learning Pathways survey

Class Time

A quick introduction to IED 336 and your instructor:

(5 min)

Introductions

Please help me get to know you a bit better, by emailing me (or send a short video or audio clip if you prefer) letting me know a bit about you (use can use the optional prompts below if you find them helpful):

  • Please introduce yourself in the way you prefer.
  • What grade or age levels you would like to teach (if you know at this point)?
  • What do you hope to get out of this class?
  • Any interests or concerns you have about educational technologies
  • Is there anything else you’d like me to know about you?

Course Design

In my opinion, “Learning is Not a Spectator Sport!” That said, my goal is to devote the majority of our daily class time will be devoted to Active Learning tasks/projects. Unfortunately today, only about 1/2 of our class time will be hands-on, but that should shift to about 70% hands-on and 30% instruction in the days to come.HyFlex Instruction Infographic

IED 336 has been designed in a HyFlex format so that we can engage with the course, face-to-face in the classroom, face-to-face via Zoom, or self-paced online via the course website depending on our group and individual needs. I have done this so that:

  • If you are not well on any given day, please let me know and I’ll share the upcoming day’s materials with you so that you can work through them when you’re feeling well enough to do so.
  • If any of you are feeling sick or unwell, please let me know so that I can work with you to make sure that you successfully complete the course.
  • If you have any family emergencies, please take care of it, and please let me know so that I can share the day’s materials with you to work through when the emergency has passed.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about this. Here is an infographic I created for a conference presentation on HyFlex if you’re not familiar with the term (also embedded on the right).

IED 336 has been consciously designed to model open learning, and Personal Learning Networks using the following tools:

  • Open course website – No LMS, persistent access and evolving only licensed content
  • 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 – Blogs and messaging platform
  • Invitations to join social media networks and communities

Here are three websites from previous course participants to give you a sense of what a learner website can look like at the end of the course:

X (formerly known as Twitter) is a great tool for networked learning, and finding educators with common interests and common goals. You unfortunately need a Twitter account to view and interact with other Twitter users. If you are interested in checking it out, here are some hashtags that previous learners have found helpful for ongoing conversations on Language Revitalization and educational technology in BC:

Course Activities in a Nutshell

  • Daily instruction and related hands-on activities
  • Daily meeting with your Learning Pod to discuss course topics
  • Daily updates on your WordPress portfolio curating topics from the day (Assignment 1)
  • Develop a lesson plan & lesson materials (Assignment 2a & 2b)
  • Present the lesson you created (Assignment 3)
  • Exploration of social media tools for learning & developing your personal learning network

Review Course Outline expectations, especially the assignments requirements:

Hands-on Lab Time

If at any point you get stuck at any point and need assistance as you work through the hands-on activities, please ask your instructor or one of your classmates for assistance.

Sketchnoting

(7 min) – Here are the workshop slides

Work through the Libraries’ DSC workshop activity, Learn a New Language with Sketchnotes. Please have fun while you doodle and remember, sketchnoting is not meant to be beautiful art, but instead is a tool to help you (and your learners) remember important or interesting information! Start here:

  1. Complete the Sketchnoting skills building activity
  2. Complete the Learn a New Language with Sketchnotes activity

Please create a sketchnote that would help you or your learners remember 5 or 6 vocabulary words for the language that you will be teaching. Please ask Rich if you have any questions or concerns.

Small Group EdTech Reflection Activity

  • Think of a time when you had either a positive or negative learning experience using technology. This could be in school or independent of the school. 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.

Get your WordPress blog setup (40 min)

  1. Review past EDCI 336 blogs, for inspiration:
  2. Review the opened.ca Code of Conduct
  3. Create your own portfolio website for the class (which if you like you are free to use in the months and years in the future):
    • Set up an OpenEd.ca account & request your website be set up. NOTE: Signing up takes about 5 minutes, but it can take up to 30 minutes for the confirmation email to arrive in your email inbox. Once you’ve clicked on the link in the confirmation email you can move on the next step to request your portfolio website.
  4. Only after you’ve requested your WordPress blog, complete the Learning Pathways survey.
  5. Write a short blog post (for today using MS Word or Google Docs) using one or more of the following blog prompts:
    • the process of setting up a blog
    • potential uses of blogs at the grade level & subject areas where you hope to teach
    • sketchnoting as a teaching method
  6. Submit your blog post to the class BrightSpace website using the Topic 1 assignment page.
  7. Customize your blog and explore Twitter (See WordPress Tutorial & Twitter Tutorial)

Homework

  1. I know you have a lot going on, but please grab some popcorn or a snack, sit back and watch Most Likely to Succeed Film (96 min). It is an inspirational documentary that questions the way traditional western classrooms are run. Please make a few notes on what you find interesting, and questions or critiques you have about the different type of school highlighted in the movie.
  2. Please remember to take time for yourself and your health.