Mr. Hood's Learning Journey

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Category: Multimedia Learning

Reflection of the Planned and Lived Curriculum

July 19, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Children Fishing into Reflections-1=“Children Fishing into Reflections-1=” by Sheba_Also 17,000,000 + views is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

I found Sarah Olsen’s summary of  Aoki’s work on the planned and lived curriculum very familiar in terms of my teaching practices, but also supportive in emphasizing the importance of the lived curriculum.

In elementary schools, it is easier to draw into the lived curriculum of students and facilitate their stories. Having the same group of students for ten months allows the educator to grow the collective bond and celebrate the diversity of learners. Teaching at grade five and six split class, the opportunity to communicate in talking circles where the curriculum becomes more personalized and flexible in responding to the “now”, and the teacher can pass between curriculum topics with an interweaving of student led interests, stories, and muses is within itself the lived curriculum.

 

This is not to say high school teachers can’t respond to the support of bringing the lived curriculum into their classrooms. However, there is more tension in the planned and lived curriculum, where specific content learning objectives are foundational pieces for students to understand more complex ideas as they move through the planned curriculum. It is in this realm where you find master educators balancing the lived experience of learning in the class and connecting it to learners with their analogies, storytelling, and giving the platform for learners to voice their experiences. Travis Fachs gives incite on his own practices with using artifacts in the classroom to provoke the lived curriculum.

In our current environment, we need to think back to Aoki’s thoughts on the lived curriculum and teaching in a blended or online environment by giving students their voices. We need students to have the opportunities to talk with each other, share their experiences, and allow teachers to respond to those voices and give guidance towards their interests. We have an amazing opportunity to facilitate pedagogy in a new way as opposed to the traditional in-classroom instruction by unlocking online learning tools for students. Online classrooms shouldn’t look like live video lectures that are teacher centered with students listening to content and not having the opportunity to engage or feel disconnected. Online or blended classrooms need to promote collaboration between learners by allowing the freedom to communicate between each other in small groups that would naturally occur in the classroom. Allow students to have their video cameras on and let them talk. Having policies in place to create the online lived curriculum allows the learner to engage, socially, emotionally, and personally.

 

Maker Spaces Outside of School and Building Social Emotional Learning

April 5, 2020 / / 2 Comments

“Which Way Now” photo by Mike Beales downloaded from Flickr CC BYND CC BY-ND 2.0

The Question

In kindergarten, the essential elements of learning are social and emotional development. Students are able to interact with their peers in a classroom, learn to play with each other, share, help each other, and build together mentally and physically. Social and emotional learning continues far beyond kindergarten and into adulthood. With our group project  in the creation of Rube Goldberg machines, we have to face the challenge of students working from home. We must ask ourselves how students can continue their social and emotional development outside of the classroom in completing their science project? How can students create meaningful connections with others from their learning?

Interactions

Students can receive support and input from their siblings and parents when building their Rube Goldberg machine. A Rube Goldberg machine has no limitations as to what it can be built out of, and the objective for the function as to the purpose of what the Rube Goldberg does is limitless as well. Students can interact with siblings and parents in the household for finding recyclables, developing their ideas, and researching various Rube Goldberg machines by watching created projects from others posted on YouTube. 

Students can use social media to post their video on what they created with their peers and get feedback. Videos can be used synchronously or asynchronously in sharing some of their learning challenges, design ideas, and current progress. A video journal can be created of their learning experience, and 

 

Technology

Flipgrid 

Learners can record videos and post them on the Flipgrid group site for other members in the classroom to see. It is an asynchronous forum in which learners are able to provide stickers, emojis, and comments towards the created content of other members in the classroom. The videos have privacy protection so that general members of the public don’t have access to student content.

Zoom

Zoom is a synchronous video streaming service that provides audio and visual of all participants on a screen. Students can share their learning in a larger setting with all participants of a classroom, or the administrator of the meeting can create breakout groups and have students meet in a smaller forum. The groups are randomly made with the size of each group being decided by the instructor.

Microsoft Classroom and Sway

Our school district is moving towards setting all student accounts to Microsoft and the use of Microsoft software such as OneNote for classroom organization, and the use of Sway for students to build digital stories. Sway is described by Microsoft as an easy tool to incorporate video, pictures, text and other media into interactive digital stories. Students can use the tool in creating a video journal, and use Sway to share with their peers what they have learned. 

There are many options available for learners with interfaces providing similar experiences to the programs mentioned above.  Students may choose to use social media platforms they may already use in their lives to have social interactions with their peers.

Challenges

Not all students will have the resources at home to create video journals, record their learning experiences, have internet access to share with others, and the hardware needed to create content. Flexibility is needed as such that students can make phone calls with their peers to share the learning and get feedback. Additionally, students don’t need to create video journals of their experiences, but instead can create journals from pencil and paper with text, drawings, learning from others, and personal reflection.

On another note, any technology tool needs to abide by the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

Final thoughts 

Adaptations can be used in delivering the curriculum and assessing the learner’s final project while still incorporating the core competencies such as social and emotional learning, digital literacy standards, and science five curriculum. However, the reality is screens cannot replace face to face interactions with learners. At such a unique time in our lives, finding alternatives that can at least create some personal connections between learners is the second best option.

 

Digital Bubbles

March 22, 2020 / / 1 Comment

Bubbles“Bubbles” by blondinrikard is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Digital Bubbles as an Educator

What is the writer trying to sell and what are they wanting you to buy?  Why would the writer frame the subject into an untruthful context, and how do you know if the writer is being truthful? Personally, I start with this frame of mind by asking myself these questions when reading content online. In a digital world where information moves quickly, and the phrase “Fake News” is an oxymoron to truth, finding multiple sources on a topic and understanding the writer’s motivation in covering the topic allows the reader to get a bigger picture of the story.

 

On January 8th, 2020, Ukrainian flight 752 was shot down in Iran. In the next 24 hours there was denial from the Iranian government and accusations from foreign entities outside of Iran that the plane was shot down. In my Science 9 class on January 10th, I showed students the English newspaper website the Tehran Times, and the news website in the United States called CNN. With both sites contradicting the events which occurred, we expanded our research into other news organizations such as The Guardian based in the United Kingdom and press the release from the Canadian government stated on CBC news. I then asked my students who is telling the truth? What story are they wanting you to buy, and why without giving my own personal thoughts on the subject. Over the weekend, with overwhelming evidence supplied by Iranian citizens with video from phones and American satellite detection of two missile launches from the Iranian military base, the Iranian government admitted fault.  Having students consider the motivation of people in creating false narratives, and how to process information as to truth and untruth is an important digital literacy skill set students need to be exposed to.

 

Howard Rheingold’s online book on Crap Detection 101, provides a variety of supportive tips and strategies on determining if a source is valid or not.  If I was to pass one piece of information from the article to my students, it would be asking yourself if you can find three reliable, separate, sources of information which validate the context of information. By having separate sources of information, it helps avoid confirmation bias where a website might hide the validity of their information by hyperlinking their sources of information to alternative false narratives. Mr Rheingold’s book also presents how alternative sources of information such as Twitter are being used to help validate what is happening in the real world, as was evident with Ukrainian flight 752.

 

Digital Bubbles influencing the Digital Project

Reading through my peers’ blogs have added to my understanding of how my group project can be improved upon. Through peer review of digital tools with my online cohort, it allows a filtering of online tools that can be helpful and supportive in addition to the context in which they can be used. Following the progress of our project, we initially used Ice cream Screen Recorder software in recording our brainstorming sessions, but we found the 5 minute video recording limitation challenging. We then switched to using screenshot software built into a group member’s Mac Book. However, not having a Mac book myself poses a challenge into the type of screen capturing software that I can use with a PC. OBS Studio is free to download, and has been used by Andrew Vogelsang in our cohort in creating screen capture content for his Digital Project. 

 

Below you can find my own introduction video on OBS Studio in which I captured some of the digital tools we are using in our digital project.

 

Creative Commons License

OBS Software Intro Use by Trevor Hood is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

In context with communication, we have been using the Blue Jeans software in collaborating with each other, Slack when we aren’t video conferencing, and shared Google Docs. There are various alternative social media tools we could have used instead, but I feel we made a decision in using these tools for the following reasons:

 

  • User accounts are already set up and established on Slack, making it easy for group members to continue with the same social media platform
  • Blue Jeans and Slack platforms were introduced to us when we started our master’s program through our professor which set familiarity and prior knowledge
  • Google Docs being extensively used in prior research projects and with previous professors in providing and sharing information

 

Trello was also useful in organizing information and setting up project deadlines with the possibility of a greater capacity in its use. Notably, this was another digital tool that was introduced to us earlier in our master’s program. 

 

In general, the tools that have been introduced to me in the master’s program have been implemented; therefore, I can conclude the main filter in making choices on the use of digital tools is the professional learning community in the University of Victoria Education and Technology master’s program.

 

Digital Bubbles and Students

It is unrealistic to expect students from kindergarten to grade twelve to use the same digital tools we are implementing in creating our digital project. There are lots of options as to how our students can communicate using digital media platforms, as various schools have alternative hardware and software tools at their disposal. Our group is focusing on students creating a ‘How to’ video on their personal learning with respect to the creation of Rube Goldberg machines. With a grade five target audience, we want the digital material created to follow the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Notably there are opportunities to share content online such as using Fresh Grade, where parents can review digital profiles and video content of their child’s learning while still making online content private and only accessible to parents or the teacher. Overall, the software tools that can be used must meet guidelines in protecting the privacy of students. 

 

Final Thoughts

Considering how our world is moving into an online environment, and possibly more so in the next few months as the world struggles to contain the coronavirus, I have been fortunate in already being exposed to online learning as a student. In the upcoming month it will be interesting to see if there is a possibility of switching roles from being a student to being a teacher, and if  I will have the option of choosing which digital tools that I would like to use in engaging my students.

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