France - ETEC 510

My second semester in the UBC MET program, January 2010, found me in ETEC 510, France!  France was the second destination on my teenage European vacation, just as ETEC 510 Design of Technology Supported Learning Environments was the second UBC MET course that I took! 

France held many new learning experiences from one end of the country to the other!  New money again, no more British Pound, now it’s the Euro but my first visit to France it was the Franc! 

I fell in love with France since my first visit and I can say that it is one of my most favourite places in the world since my many returns!  I have had the opportunity to travel to Europe with adults on all adult tours (all teachers) and with students as well.  I currently take groups of students to France every two to three years and our next trip is right around the corner: Spring of 2012 – a 16 day tour of France! 

ETEC 510 with its focus of Design of Technology-supported Learning Environments, I was hooked!  I loved this class and the content, I was completely engaged!  I wanted to learn everything I could about building and creating a Moodle CMS and classroom Wiki’s – I wanted to use this new stuff I was learning right away!  In my opinion, it was making my job easier in the end (after putting in the initial hours and content).  Students, parents and other teachers would have places to go to answer their questions 24 hours a day, anytime, anywhere! 

In this course I was introduced to chapters of Terry Anderson’s (2008) book and his suggestions for online learning and communications as well as Bates & Poole’s (2003) SECTIONS framework for technology selection.  I never knew at the time that these resources would be ones that I would revisit many times in the future. 

ETEC 510 has been one of the most applicable courses to my teaching thus far.  Wow – I couldn’t believe they actually designed a course that was this fun, where I was allowed to play with and learn about new technologies and how to use them while creating meaningful, interactive and constructivist-based, engaging activities for my students!  This wasn’t like taking a course (except for the deadlines) it was fun!  And today, it remains to be one of my favourites and I still listen to and use the lastfm website we explored!

All three of the group projects that I worked on in this course I had the same partner.  It was great working with the same partner for all three projects as we worked together from the beginning of the course until the end and we had the same high school math interests.  It was great that we could discuss with and bounce ideas around.  We learned each other’s strengths and weaknesses and where we could complement each other. 

As I have three favourite cities in France: Paris, St. Malo and Nice, accordingly I have selected three artifacts from this course, yes, all three of my group projects: 

1. Paris -  Text Document: Trigonometry in Grade 12 Math

     Final Paper - Group Project: Digital Module - Moodle

     (accompanies #3 the Digital Module Moodle Unit)

2. St. Malo -  Design Wiki Entry – Tablet Enhanced Learning Environments in Math

3. Nice -  Collaborative Digital Module - Moodle 

     Click on Guest Access and the site will appear!

Reflections:

2.  St. Malo - Design Wiki Entry – Tablet Enhanced Learning Environments in Math

St. Malo is an amazing little town on the west coast of France that I have completely fallen in love with!  It’s rich history, architecture and culture is so beautiful.  It was so intoxicating being on the coast and visiting World War II sites along the coast, including the Normandy beaches. 

ETEC 510 also introduced me to the class Design Wiki where my group partner and I both with high school math backgrounds decided to work together for the entire semester on both projects using a grade 12 Math focus:  The Design Wiki and the 2 part Final Moodle Digital Module and Paper.   I was already hooked on Wikis and their possibilities for use in the classroom from 511 that I wanted to jump right in! 

I wasn’t familiar with St. Malo the first time I had visited but I became more familiar the more times I would return I would journey through the streets retracing steps finding my way around and using a map I would scout out and research where I wanted to explore next and the same happened in my course.  I was not familiar with tablets but my partner was so it was an excellent opportunity for my partner to teach me about them and their integration in the classroom.  The research required for the assignment was also an excellent opportunity for me to familiarize myself with tablets and reacquaint myself with editing and collaborating on a wiki. 

“By having a student-student interaction, students form a learning community that not only support and challenge each other, but to improve their overall engagement.  It is a mixture of learner-centred and community-centred tool (Andresen, 2009).   Through asynchronous communication, students can collaborate and share their knowledge and understanding. Problem-based learning will be an approach in this regard.  Scaffolding may also be necessary to support learners to undertake complex problems that may otherwise be beyond their proximal development. (Barab & Duffy, 2000)” (Tutkaluk & Chan, 2010).

As I have often revisited France and St. Malo, I find myself revisiting the 510 Design Wiki searching through the amazing amount of excellent information that it holds.  The 510 Design Wiki has become a 'Go To' place for me when I seek the answers to many digital questions! 

3.  Nice - Collaborative Digital Module - Moodle

Nice holds many amazing memories as does creating this Grade 12 Math Moodle site.  I was so happy that I would be creating this Moodle Digital Module with my partner.  I was briefly introduced to Moodle in a PD session at work but this course was an excellent opportunity for me to put theory to practice designing and creating a digital module for a Moodle site.  Bates & Poole’s (2003) SECTIONS framework and Anderson (2008) and Andresen’s (2009) suggestions for creating quality online courses guided our creation process and decision making as we designed our digital module. 

The power of collaboration is amazing as we created something better than I had initially envisioned but when you work in a group or partnership you have to compromise and you don’t always get some of your suggestions or personal vision incorporated.   This 510 site does not house some of my suggestions but I was able to add these in my other Moodle that I created in 565.  I’m including this Moodle as it is a base to make comparisons to my future Moodles.  I created another Moodle a few months later in ETEC 565 and the sites are similar in some respects yet quite different and I wanted to be able to compare the two so I’ve included them both as artifacts. 

Putting Theory to Practice - Feeling inspired and more confident in my new found technical skills and familiarity with wikis, I decided to try out my new skills!  So, around the end of January 2010, I started by creating a wiki for my France Trip to answer most of the questions my students and parents typically have about the France trip (see link below) as we were leaving in April of 2010 that year.  Then it snowballed.  I’ve created a few wikis since to help my students (and me).  I’m not including the 2 student wikis I have for past French classes as they hold student information but I have included the two most used sites. 

Feel free to see how I’ve been able to put theory into practice and apply my learning to my classroom:

1.    France 2010 – France Trip Website

2.    HJCMath – H. J. Cody High School Math Website

References

Anderson, T. (2008). Toward a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.) Theory and Practice of Online Learning, Chapter 2 (pp. 45-74). Available online at: http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120146

Andresen, M. (2009). Asynchronous discussion forums: success factors, outcomes, assessments, and limitations. Educational Technology & Society, 12(1), 249-257.

Barab, S. & Duffy, T. (2000). From practice fields to communities of practice. In D. Johassen and S. Land (Eds.), Theoretical Foundations of Learning Environments. Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: A framework for selecting and using technology. Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. New York: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated.

Jonassen, D. (1999). Designing constructivist learning environments. In C. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional Design Theories and Models: Volume II. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Lastfm – http://www.last.fm/

Tutkaluk, E. & Chan, L. (2010). ETEC 510 - Design Project: Trigonometry in Grade 12 Math. Unpublished graduate essay, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

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