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.