Mr. Hood's Learning Journey

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Tag: Zoom

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.

 

Adding some Cement to Digital Storytelling

March 15, 2020 / / 4 Comments

Personal Reflection

Networking“Networking” by punQtum is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The coronavirus is creating a catalyst in implementing distance learning opportunities through technology for both educators and learners. We are fortunate to have a distance education program that helps support a model of distance education in which someone like myself, a high school classroom teacher, can find alternative ways of engaging with students. With uncertainty in the air of the possibility of not returning into the classroom after spring break, it makes sense to start thinking of how one can prepare for an alternative learning environment conducted from home. At the present time, my digital storytelling project idea is on my own journey on how I can create a learning community from home.

I presently have five courses, but decided to focus my journey in preparation for my Life Science 11 course. For synchronous communication, I am considering the use of Zoom as I like the hands-up feature and the ease of use in creating break-out rooms for students to communicate with each other. Notably, the University of Victoria  on their website has gone with Blackboard Collaborate for professors to continue with their instruction, which has similar features. It goes to show there are multiple alternative for video conference software at an educator’s disposal.

 

Colleagues in the master’s course have also considered asynchronous communication through video casts, podcasts, Flipgrid for student output activities and Kahoot as a tool in formative assessment.  As well, setting up a website that brings all of the links and resources together sets up a foundation for students to start. Google Classroom appears to be a strong option, and am fortunate to have a colleague who has created a flipped classroom with the use of this software. It appears that digital content is easy to upload and share with students. However, my colleague did suggest to use avatars, or pseudonyms for student identity to meet the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPOP) guidelines set by the B.C. Ministry of Education.

 

Group Project  Reflection

Currently, we are deciding on how to integrate all of our own digital stories under one roof, and how we will make it easy for others to navigate through our stories. Our overall theme is in creating “How to videos” on creating digital online learning experiences. We are communicating on how to coordinate through the social media app called Slack, and using Trello as our platform for organizing tasks. The initial phase of brainstorming took place through a shared Google Docs. It allows all members to read, reflect, and contribute ideas on the direction to take.  Presently, we have been using our Google Docs much more than Trello. It will be interesting to see which software tools are going to be used or discarded. Tomorrow we plan to use the video conference platform called Blue Jeans Network for recording our brainstorming session. This will be our second session conferencing together. Our first session was approximately thirty minutes, but I feel it was very productive as it gave multiple perspectives on some of the problems we were facing, such as how to present content to the audience, our overall theme for digital storytelling, and setting up goals with dates in place to collaborate in the future. With that last note about the future, I am looking forward to seeing our ideas build into something more concrete.

 

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