Category: EdTech

Hello and welcome back to another edition of the IROSS blog! Today will be talking about inquiry and education!

As you may already know inquiry is an incredibly engaging form education that almost requires a student to have a passion about they are learning. It is a student centered and student choice lead style of learning.

I really enjoy inquiry learning in theory but when it came time to do my own free inquiry projects I struggled and often saw them as a chore. I initially thought it was the topic I chose, or maybe that I was feeling pre-occupied with my other assignments. I just couldn’t quite figure out why it wasn’t necessarily working for me until Trevor Mackenzie showed up as a guest lecturer in 336. He showed the class one infographic that made all my problems with free inquiry come crashing into my head! This is that infographic:

Now I realized that I had never done Inquiry learning in school and initially I thought that shouldn’t be a problem. After completing university I always liked to believe I am semi-capable learner and I still like to believe that. What this infographic had showed me though was I was thrown directly into the DEEP END! No water wings, no life jacket, no kiddy pool, no swim lessons, no belly boards, no practice, no training! I was a just a young learner thrown into the deep end of the pool by an older sibling on sweltering hot day! At first I was ecstatic and happy as I flying through the air thinking about how great learning about something new and at my own pace. Then I hit the water! It was sweltering hot day so the immediately the water felt refreshing and all my friends are in the pool too! And that’s when I realized I had forgotten how to swim properly, sure I was capable of swimming but I wasn’t going any where fast and everything seemed like a struggle and a little bit scary. I realized that I had skipped all the other stages of inquiry learning and started in the deep end. Inquiry learning just like most styles of learning requires sequence and structure and if you try to bite off more than you can chew, choking is a possibility. I think the struggle I had with Free Inquiry was that I didn’t go through the motions.

That’s my reflection on inquiry based education, when you skip steps you might stumble.

Till next time,

IROSS

Hello and welcome back to another edition of the IROSS blog! Today will be talking about the relationship between some of my favourite things! Education and Games!

First off I would like to talk about
GLOBAL SCHOOL PLAY DAY! Here is a link to their website.
https://www.globalschoolplayday.com

Here is a TED talk explaining some of the concepts behind Global School play day!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg-GEzM7iTk&feature=youtu.be&list=PLc695sWmPGpybRuxvaPgvwd2s8eGqAWYj&ab_channel=TEDxTalks

I was fortunate enough to partake in a global play a couple of years ago! It was a completely free and unstructured day of play for the students. I was able to watch young students (Elementary School) make up their own games, establish their own rules, and generally have a wonderful day. The following day the students were required to reflect on their experience about play day and what they had learned. A lot of the students I worked with talked about the enjoyment they had, how wonderful it was to have a day with their friends and classmates without parents or teachers controlling them but what stuck out to me the most how was many students talked about respect and regulations. This was a little bit of a surprise to me until I also reflected upon the day. A lot of the kids made up new games to play with their friends and schoolmates, but the playground unlike the classroom has different consequences. When one does not follow the rules in the classroom there is a possibility they may be reprimanded by the teacher, but when a kid doesn’t follow the rules to a made up game, the other youth may choose to play without them. Now as a supervisor during play day it was my job to make sure students don’t fight but it wasn’t my job to solve their problems. It was a very effective and educational day for both teachers and students and I would highly recommend it to all school.

Rhetorically I would to ask “Why do humans stop making up their own games as they age?”

Now back to games in education. Growing up I loved math games, gamified class reading competitions, in class jeopardy and I even played scientific vocabulary hangman in university. It was always a sure-fire method to get me engaged in class or with the material. I truly believe games can be a successful part of education.

Things get a little tricky when it comes to video games and education. Personally I learned an immense about communication while partaking in 40 person raids in a game called World Of Warcraft (Vanilla version). The 40 man raid required 40 people working together and communicating instantaneously in an extremely organized manner for time periods usually around 4-8+ hours and during this time period one individual mistake can ruin all the progress made by the collective 40 people. It quickly taught me a lot about the importance and power of organized communication as I had to listen to multiple different people while completing organized tasks. Interestingly enough years down the road when I working with grade 7 students at educational retreat World of Warcraft was brought up by some students which instantly allowed me to bond with them through the love of the game. These students told me World of Warcraft was how they fine tuned their reading and typing skills. We conversed about how important those skills were to the game and how it motivated them and offered a method of practice.

Although I mentioned some benefits to unstructured games led by students those games were educational on a social-emotional level but they weren’t directed towards any learning objectives and the same could be said about most of the off-the-shelf video games that are played.

Which brings me to a question:
What is more important in gamification teaching academic content or academic skills?

Now well I don’t believe that educational video games should be a mandatory part of public education, I do believe they can be supplemental.

Welcome back to another edition of the IROSS BLOG!

Hyflex learning. Initiate challenge mode. An education style that requires a little bit more from everyone. Student’s can either be 100% online or fully present and you must be able deliver everything else in-between as well! AND you’re going to “provide the most equitable delivery format to students that align with their needs and learning preferences”. Oh and let that be subject to change at a moment’s notice! As a teacher wannabee this sounds next level. Sure the theory was digestible and even made good sense too. A student centered approach where the teacher’s concern should be “how to ensure students meet their needs as learners and adapt to changing conditions and dynamics”. I am happy to believe all of this is possible and I acknowledge how important this bridge is but I struggle to visualize what this would look like, let alone trying to imagine what this would be like or look like as someone without practical professional experiences.

I enjoyed some of the educational tips that were leaked in week 7. Some take aways I had from the Hybrid Flexible Class article and learning podcast were:
-Preference doesn’t always accommodate reality. Basically meaning sometimes the best methods aren’t always realistic.
-Ask for it! If you want something specific you must ask for it. Do not assume anything, be straight forward and ask for it.
-Establish those rules, construct the class. With flexible and hybrid learning, foundational ground rules become extremely important for setting everyone up (Teacher included) for success.
-The assumptions that go along with “it’s just not working” in regards to asynchronous education. This little tidbit really hit home with me. Any professional that has had to switch to a bit more online or asynchronous work has to think twice before saying “It’s just not working” because that means you believed it was working before and I mean most people would like to believe or be given the benefit of the doubt that your prior work was successful. That may not be the case for certain professionals just because we were accustomed to something doesn’t mean it was the optimum method. This made me think about how there are possible benefits from how the education industry responded and adapted to the pandemic. I look forward to the new equilibrium that will be forged in education because of the disturbance caused by the pandemic.

On short side note:
I am happy they choose the name hyflex over flebrid.

Building figures with 3d modeling was lots of fun with Tinkercad! I was slightly frustrated at how the coordinate and shape data were tricky to manipulate. My enjoyment would have been increased if I was able to insert and manipulate figures by the use coordinate locations and data instead of the use of drag, drop, and stretch.

Till next time!

IROSS

Hello and welcome back to another edition of the IROSS blog. This week will be about teachers teaching teachers through what is called an Edcamp!

What is an edcamp you say!? It is professional development day designed to allow teachers to explore and propound new ideas through educational teacher collaboration. A powerful display of how teacher networks can work together to improve and expand knowledge and professional practice.

The edcamp topic I was interested in and put forward was “Story Telling in Education”. Something I have always enjoyed, have always been interested in, and believe to be one of the most powerful educational tools. People have been telling, listening and learning from and through storytelling for as long as people have been around and I actually have no facts to base that opinion on but I am going to stand by it. I love stories, whether they are educational, fictional, personal, and everything else in between, they are an effective means to convey knowledge, engage the audience and express ones experiences. When I look back at my education the things I remember best were stories told to me, and not so coincidentally I express and share my memories in story format.

Luckily enough there was 5 people who were also interested in storytelling in education and we came to together through the power of the internet to partake in a zoom based edcamp. Immediately we all started sharing stories of how story telling has impacted our lives and educational journeys, not a big a surprise at all here! The edcamp platform allowed for all subject areas to share a stage and explain how they use stories to connect the students to the education. Social studies teachers telling stories of history and politics, fine arts teachers telling stories to express and incite emotions, science teachers telling stories to engage and connect students with the information and many more. Storytelling is an extremely powerful tool that be can be used effectively for increasing student engagement, information retention and relationship building.

Now the edcamp experience was an enjoyable one but unfortunately it was restricted to a zoom format. Based on my experience here are some of the pros and cons that I think exist within a Zoom based Edcamp.

Pros of Zoom based Edcamp
-Accessibility! Anyone from anywhere can share and learn educational tools!
-Technology based! (Making it easy to document, share media, collaborate (Remember the SAMR model)
-Human management! Zoom has mute functions and breakout rooms which mitigates interruptions

Cons of Zoom based Edcamp
-Human management, only 1 person speaks at a time, harder to get up and switch topics, zoom interactions are different from those set in reality.
-Less atmosphere, I am just sitting at home and not actually sharing a space with my peers and colleagues.
-Different style of activities and engagement, no physical or hands on activities.
-More screen time

All in all my zoom based edcamp on storytelling experience was a positive one! I would very much partake in more of them. It is a fantastic method for networking and learning. I would definitely use an edcamp to find myself educational mentors!

Here is the product that was created by the story telling edcamp.

Till next time!

IROSS

Hello and welcome back!
Week 5 is all about innovation in education! (I love how that rhymes)

Somedays I perceive things as challenges because they represent a certain process I don’t always look forward to doing! For example sometimes writing this blog feels like a chore but then I think that it’s only just communicating and I enjoy communicating but what I don’t always enjoy is writing!
Luckily people have been innovating how we communicate our understanding  for a long time and also applies to education.

So this blog post will be an audio post!

I hope you enjoyed your listen! Now you can put a voice to these words!

Till next time,

IROSS

Hello and welcome back to the IROSS Blog!
This week we are here today to talk about Multimedia and its multi-learning opportunities. It’s the 21^st century whether you like it or not, but I am sure with modern medicine and the advancements human’s have made to quality of life you do like it!

During Week 4 I explored and learned about:
The SAMR theory of technology adoption which describes the different levels of technology integration in education.
SAMR is divided into two categories,
Transformation and Enhancement.
Enhancement simply put is just how we use technology to enhance learning!
Transformation is how we transform learning and this one is pretty important because this use of technology creates new styles of education that were not possible before the technology.

The first letter in SAMR is Substitution which is in the ENHANCEMENT category, substitution is your basic well substitution. Instead reading from a book it’s reading from a screen, completing a worksheet online instead of by hand. No functional change just a different format of the same thing.

The second latter in SAMR is augmentation which is in the ENHANCEMENT category, augmentation is basically added a little extra to the learning experience from example instead of a traditional paper flowchart this augmented one is animated an animated flowchart. Same experience but a little extra to help enhance the learning experience.

The third letter in SAMR is Modification which is in the TRANSFORMATION category, modification is where things start to deviate from enhancements on the traditional methods. For example students collaborating in real time on Google docs from afar is an example of modification as its something that previously impossible without the technology.

The final letter in SAMR is Redefinition which is in the TRANSFORMATION category, redefinition is the pinnacle how technology can transform a learning experience, creating an experience that’s impossible without the technology. An example of this would be conversing via video chat with native Spanish speakers from across the globe in a Spanish class.

Fun facts I learned!
Multimedia learning is much older than I expected! A picture book is multimedia learning! Check out one of the first picture books!
Orbis Pictus – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbis_Pictus

And remember technology is only a tool, it does not replace the educator, it only empowers them!

Till next time!

IROSS

Welcome back to the inner workings of the IROSS Blog! 
This time were here to discuss the dynamic digital world we now belong too whether we like it or not its here to stay and be permanent.

During Week 3 I explored and learned about:
-Creativity in the digital world and the laws surrounding, supporting and constraining intellectual property
-Digital footprints, digital consent and my personal digital record
-How do we prepare the next generations for life in our dynamic digital world

RIP! Remix Manifesto Documentary!
(Image from: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1397511/)

Copyrights in the digital age! 
As some one who grew up in the 90’s and 2000’s I have had a unique upbringing with the development of the internet. Switching to Dial-up to Ethernet to Wireless all before I finished Highschool. I clearly remember the age of consequence free pirating and loved it! It was a cheat code to bypass paying for information, music, media, computer programs and games. The bounty of the internet was ripe for the taking and it was great time to be a teenager.  Those days are no longer and the digital world has become a little more restrictive.
The documentary RIP! Was an extremely insightful documentary into the complications of copyright and consent in the digital age and answered questions such as:
Who owns intellectual property? The creator, the distributor, or the consumer?
Which lead to questions like:
What is extent of greed and corruption in the modern technological world?
How and why does “Society” (used loosely here) prioritize profit over development and progress.
Fortunately this documentary showed how the people are attempting to take back the power from the corporations that believe they can permanently own ideas and use them to oppress society.
So where does one draw the line between copying and creating?
In my personal view replication is creation regardless of content, process and result. Unfortunately law states otherwise. The line between copying and creating when it relates to profiting and economic gain is more defined, you can’t make money off what you don’t own,  plain and simple, in fact you can not even use what you don’t own. I believe that drawn line cripples modern creativity in the digital age.
What is more important the creative process or the final product?
They are equally important! This is the classic “Journey vs Destination” debate, both serve important purposes.  You can not have one without the other and I don’t think they should viewed separately.
Copyright laws were originally intended to encourage people to create. Do you think that intention has changed in recent years?
YES! Copyright laws as I learned in the documentary, were originally intended to encourage creativity by stopping the theft of creative ideas, but they were designed before the internet and only “protected” your ideas for 14 years. Copying ideas without the use of powerful technology such as computers and cameras required creative methods and was a creative process within itself!
But now in the age of the internet copyright laws are mainly used to control the flow of ideas and the possible profit they can generate, regardless of their potential to improve human society and wellbeing.

My Digital Footprint
Jessie Miller explained to me that the information and content I have released to the internet is permanent and that my best of course of action is control how accessible that data is. Jessie taught me that to be an educator is to be a role model and that my social media presence must represent that!
I immediately after class started restricting the information that is available about me and made separate accounts to digitally separate my professional and personal lives!
I was relieved to find out that I was not accessible with a quick or in-depth series of google searches! With some serious searching the only thing I was able to find was:

(https://issuu.com/blackpress/docs/i20190628041646404)
A news paper article from my hometown about a tennis tournament!

But! I did learn about some interesting individuals I share a name with!
Such as the Ian Ross who inherited the Butchart Gardens, and has a garden at UVic commemorating him! Google “Ian Ross Victoria” and you will find this gentleman!

I think being easy to find on the internet can be both a positive and a negative. An easy way to promote myself professionally but also the potential to associate negatives with my identity.  A time may come when I choose to hand craft a professional internet identity but until then I am happy to be invisible on the internet. I understand I can curate my digital identity by uploading positive content of myself. I can associate my social media presences with google search tags to promote my “relevance” in the context of being easily searched. I think if recruiters searched me and found nothing it would be better than them finding negatives about me, but they also might think that I am irrelevant or out of date. I hope if a recruiter found nothing about me, they would use their human skills to analyze my potential as a possible employee.

Now its time to go deeper on this topic! I may understand the positives, negatives, and potential consequences of having an internet identity and have an idea of how to curate and control that identity, but do students and parents have that understanding? Who is teaching them about this?
To be an educator in the digital era one must practice and teach how to have a healthy relationship with the digital world.

This week really made me think hard about this blog and I realized how important it is for me to practice these skills and stay relevant in our digital age.

Also this week I learned how to edit media files! Enjoy this slow motion video!
Click BeachBailIRoss to download!

BeachBailIROSS

Cheers,

IRoss

Hello again and welcome to the inner workings of IROSS EdTech!
Two weeks ago I watched a documentary called Most Likely to Succeed.

Screen Captured by yours truly, IROSS

This documentary drama revealed some educational styles I had not seen before! It really highlighted the power and advantages of conventional and new age learning against traditional and classical education styles. The film challenged current views of education and reimagined what students and educators are capable of! I really enjoyed the student lead multidisciplinary approach to education, to me it was painting the big picture all at once instead of breaking down every component and building it separately piece by piece. This documentary accompanied with the question “Do we need to reimagine Education?” had me thinking about my education, my experiences and the importance of moving forward in our dynamic world. I came to the conclusion that we don’t need to reimagine education, but we definitely need to diversify it! In my eyes students need to experience all forms of education!   Whether it be classical, conventional, new age, virtual, digital, hands on, formal, informal, non-formal, students should be exposed to it. I don’t yet believe that there is one best form of education for all learners, students are diverse and education needs to be as well. I believe we need to hold onto the past and embrace the future at the same time, I believe we can do it all! This whole situation makes me think of Socrates when he denounced writing and reading and stated that learning at the expense of memory will instill a forgetfulness in the soul, or when people thought video was going to kill the radio stars and that the internet would end them off. Take a look at our society and you will realize that none of these things have gone everywhere, people still learn by listening, reading and writing and  radio, video and the internet all coexist.  People like different things, whether they are old or new and our education system should reflect that. We can move forward without letting go of the past by diversifying education.

Here is a picture I took of my E-reader. Edited to have the brand removed. I think the e-reader is the best way to read but many of my friends and family vehemently disagree. Some people just prefer the classical way of doing things.

The real thing I think we need to reimagine is:
How we coexist with our planet.
Something that I believe will only be possible through education.

Credit to: Fateme Alaie @Banuuu Location: Tehran, Tehran Province, Iran

The first full of week of UVic’s PDPP program has begun and I have been tasked to create a blog and make a post! Easy task right? Well that will be revealed at the end of this post.

Before I could begin to create this blog, I had to ask myself some important questions such as: How comfortable am I with being online? What type of information am I willing to put on the internet? Will this blog be public or private? Where this content will end up?

Well let me tell you about the process of making a blog, blogging and setting up a website.

First I was exposed to a beautiful art piece of a free range rooster. Much like this one below:

Then the step by step instructions came! (Some of favourite things have step by step directions, from instant noodles to math equations!)
By the way the step by step instructions also included and required me to make a cup of tea! Who would have thought!
It was all pretty straight forward and understandable until the wall of text jumped right at me! The wall of text known as Privacy agreements and.. well… I am letting this blog out to the world!

After about 15-30 minutes on fiddling around, I had created a website and was ready to post, but instead I procrastinated and told myself “I will learn this better if I do this twice by having to relearn it after I close my screen, walk away, and forget all the steps”. To be honest I think my strategy worked out quiet well in hindsight.
Well in the end I figure blogging is like running. Everyone knows how to do it, everyone does it at different paces, for different purposes and that the hardest part is taking the first step.