Welcome to Week 2 of our class! The first week or so is always a learning curve as we set up our various tools and get oriented to BOTH the pedagogy of this class as well as the technology. I will support you through this process and plan to meet you this week or next in 1-1 meetings to talk about your free inquiry topics.

We have another busy week ahead of us, but I hope the new weekly topic format that we will start to use will be helpful in keeping us better organized. This is the method that I use for the completely asynchronous courses I teach, but I think that this format will be a good fit for our class.  I plan on emailing the weekly outline on Monday nights or Tuesday mornings from now on.

As you’ll notice below, I’m including the learning outcomes for the week in my weekly topic outline in order to help you better understand what my expectations are for the class each week. I will continue to include Pre-Class items to be completed before our class time each week on Friday at 10:00 AM (this week the pre-class tasks are mainly homework items from last week plus a couple of small additional tasks).

The class outline covers what we will work on in face-to-face class (either on campus or via Zoom). The homework section is a list of things that I’d recommend you complete between Friday and Monday so that when my Weekly Topic email arrives on Monday evening or Tuesday morning you’re ready to start on the pre-class work for the next class on Friday. Here is a visualization of the new weekly format:

We will discuss this new format at the beginning of class on Friday, so if you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns, please bring them to class with you.

Week 2 Learning Objectives:

• Describe the key points of BC Privacy laws as they relate to education
• Discuss the pros and cons of the pedagogy used by the school in the Most Likely to Succeed documentary
• Identify the differences between a Lesson Plan and a Learning Plan
• Describe the difference between Free Inquiry & Guided Inquiry in relation to the major class assignments
• Setup PLN feed in Feedly and Twitter
• Use Trello, if desired, for the project management of major assignments for this course (and other courses if desired)
• Find freely licensed images and correctly use and attribute them
• Create blog posts for this course using the provided rubrics, including a critical lens when reviewing educational technologies & pedagogies, that include hyperlinks, images, videos, and attribution
• Signup for a learning Pod and Participate in your first Learning Pod meeting

Pre-class:

If you have not done so already please complete the following homework from week 1 in preparation for our class this week:

1. Review ISTE Standards and the EDCI 336 website
2. Write a blog post about two or more of the following: 
   • a) the process of setting up a blog
   • b) blog as pedagogy
   • c) potential uses of blogs at the grade level & subject areas where you hope to teach
3. Grab some popcorn and watch Most Likely to Succeed Film (96 min). Make notes on what you find interesting, and questions/critiques you have.
4. Watch Education as if people mattered TED Talk video by Jeff Hopkins (12 min):
   

    

5. If you have any questions or want to share resources or ideas, please post to our private A03 with Rich – Spring 2021 Mattermost Channel
6. Think strategically about your free inquiry topic (Assignment 1) and education technology interest (Assignment 2) for sharing & feedback with Rich in your 1-1 meetings via Zoom this week or next.

For Class Time on Friday (No need to work through this unless you are unwell and not able to make it to our class time):

1. Class Checkin and Q&A
2. Discuss Most Likely to Succeed Film:  
   • Pair & share questions (5 min)
     • Do you agree with the film’s assertion that we need to re-imagine education, or is the status quo more or less satisfactory?
     • What do you think stops educators from shifting to these approaches?
     • What might this look like in your context?
     • What concerns or excites you about this approach?
3. Lesson Plan vs Learning Plan (2 min):
   
4. Free Inquiry & Educational Technology Presentation Q&A:
   • Use PSII tools to start to plan your inquiry (and select a topic or two if you haven’t already)
   • Free Inquiry project inspiration (bottom of the page)
   • Educational Technology Presentation inspiration (bottom of the page)
5. Optional but recommended: Trello is a great organizational and project management tool and I encourage you to try it out: 
   • Setup a  Trello board & Start on your Free. Inquiry Learning Plan
   • Generate a free inquiry question and add it to Trello (or another document if you aren’t using Trello)
   • Generate research sub-questions and add them to cards in Trello (or another document if you aren’t using Trello) (3 min)
     
6. Please don’t forget to sign up for 1-1 meetings this week or next (find the link on the password-protected A03 Social Spaces page)
7. Lab: Setting up your PLN/Managing Feeds
   • Why PLN’s?  
   • Set up a Twitter account if you don’t have one (optional)
     • Log on to Tweetdeck with your twitter credentials (if you choose to use Twitter).
     • In Tweetdeck, follow #edci336 #edci336news #edtechbc #bcedchat #bclearns and perhaps others like #uviced #uvic #edchat #edtech & districts like #sd61learn #sd63 #sd36learn
   • What interesting topics are being discussed in the feeds you’ve subscribed to?
8. Open Educational Resources:
   • What is an Open Educational Resource or OER?  “Open educational resources should be freely shared through open licences which facilitate use, revision, translation, improvement and sharing by anyone. Resources should be published in formats that facilitate both use and editing, and that accommodate a diversity of technical platforms.” – Cape Town Open Education Declaration
   • Where can I find OER lesson plans or activities that I could use in my classroom?
     • An example of a general K-12 OER portal website is the OER Commons. Please browse around the OER Commons website, and search for lesson plans and activities for the grade levels you’d like to teach and subjects you’re interested in. You might want to bookmark this website!
     • PLN via Twitter is another great way to find resources from like-minded teachers.
     • An example of a subject-specific OER website is the Hour of Code. It has hundreds of lesson plans, not only for math and coding skills, but most lesson plans are co-curricular, so include a coding component, and additionally language arts, social studies, art, or science-based elements.
9. Lab: Images for blog posts:
   
   • Finding royalty-free images you can use free of charge in your blog posts and elsewhere – Unsplash, Pexels, The Noun Project, Public Domain Vectors (5 min video):
   • Uploading and adding images to a WordPress post or page (2 min)
   • Adding YouTube videos to a WordPress post or page (1 min)
   • How to give attribution or Creative Commons or Freely licensed media (2 min video):
10. LEARNING PODS – self-creating pods in a Google Doc (find the link to learning pod signup on the password-protected A03 Social Spaces page).
    • Here is the single point rubric for your weekly blog posts.
    • Blog Post Feedback Rubric
    • Blog Post Peer-Review guidance
11. Weekly blog posts to document your learning in class and to document progress on your inquiries. Please incorporate an edited image, a properly-attributed CC image (30 min)
    • Do we need to reimagine education?
    • What obstacles to educators face when they try to change pedagogy?
    • What concerns you and/or excites you about this approach?
    • Pros & cons of Lesson Plans vs Learning Plans?
    • What are the potential benefits of developing a robust PLN?
    • What are the potential benefits of using Creative Commons licensed images in my blog posts?
12. Post-class support and questions with Rich

Homework:

1. Weekly Reflection Blog Post (if you didn’t have time to do it in class):
   • Review the 336 Blog Post Rubrics to make sure you’re including all the minimally required elements for your weekly blog posts.
   • Here is a sample high-quality weekly blog post on the topic and/or technology of the week.
   • Blog prompts (use three or more):
     • Do we need to reimagine education?
     • What obstacles do educators often face when they try to change pedagogy?
     • What concerns and/or excites you about this approach?
     • Pros & cons of Lesson Plans vs Learning Plans?
     • What are the potential benefits of developing a robust PLN?
     • What are the potential benefits of using Creative Commons?
2. Weekly Free Inquiry Blog Post:
   • Review the 336 Blog Post Rubrics to make sure you’re including all the minimally required elements for your weekly blog posts.
   • Here is a sample high-quality weekly blog post on the topic and/or technology of the week.
   • Blog prompts (use three or more):
     • What is your free inquiry topic (if you’ve chosen it)?
     • What are topics you are considering (if you haven’t chosen a topic yet)?
     • What are you excited about? Unsure about?
     • What are your next steps in your Free Inquiry project?
3. It is very important that you fill out the Learning Pathway & Consent form (see the week 1 email for the Social Spaces Password) before class time so that I know what your class blog URL is and whether or not you consent to use any or all of the US cloud-based tools for the course
4. Review Trevor McKenzie’s Inquiry-based learning posters (they are very cool & helpful) (5 min)
5. If you haven’t already, please use PSII tools to start to plan your inquiry (and select a topic or two to choose from if you haven’t already) 
   • Look at the bottom of this page for Free Inquiry topics use in the past for inspiration.
6. If you haven’t already, please Book a 1-1 Meeting  with Rich to discuss your individual Free Inquiry and group Guided Assignments (see the week 1 email for the Social Spaces Password)

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash