EDU 642

Alternative Assessment Activity

For my “alternative assessment” activity, I chose to create a FlipGrid page that I’ll use with my PE class. While going through this activity I discovered that the creation of public grids are no longer possible, I will share the link with you here, but I doubt you’ll be able to access it, so I'll also share a bunch of screenshots to show you what I did with my FlipGrid (as well as the videos I made in each activity).

To get the ball rolling on my grid, I started with 3 activities and included custom videos made by me in each activity

1. Task 1 - an activity for students to introduce themselves

2. Task 2 - an activity for students to talk about their understanding of the meaning of “Healthy Lifestyle”

3. Task 3 - a partner activity where they teach a friend a physical skill, with the intention to be used as a form of an icebreaker and relationship builder in the class.

The point of task 2 is partly for me to check their understanding of this, (like a diagnostic assessment), but also for them to be introspective, and for them to have something to refer back to at the end of the year to see if their idea of a “Healthy Lifestyle” has changed.

I can see this being a great tool to use to track and assess a student's learning of physical movement skills, but not only that, to have proof so that I can back up my assessments. Since most PE assessments are traditionally based on observation, this gives me an opportunity to share data in a way that is not solely based on my word, especially if there is a parent that is complaining about a student’s grade.

Please see the included screenshots and videos below to see how I created my grid.

Reflection

August 4, 2021

So far the MALDT program has actually been surprisingly enjoyable for an education degree. When thinking about a masters before I started, the worry of excessive “busy work” was in the forefront of my mind. But so far, there hasn’t really been anything that has left me feeling like what I’m doing is a waste of my time or just an assignment for the sake of doing an assignment to get marks.

Thus far, each of the assignments have felt authentic, useful, and relevant, especially to someone like myself, where teaching with tech and media is exactly what I do. I have especially appreciated the ability to create things for my own practice, as well as how professors are willing to accommodate students to make the projects their own. And even for someone like myself, who has done a lot of similar work to what we’ve been learning, it has yet to feel like a waste of time, merely a way to share and elevate my passion and pre-existing knowledge. And for the stuff that I have completed in the past (like the video assignments) it gave me an opportunity to feel validated for my previous productions, which I really appreciated.

One of the areas that I enjoyed the most in EDU642 was the unit on design principles. This is something that I feel I occasionally struggle with (as I mentioned in my blog post for that week) and I enjoyed being able to learn more about this area; I definitely feel this will be something that was pivotal for me in this class. Additionally, I’m confident I will go back to review this quite often in my future practice, both in my own stuff on YouTube, as well as how I teach my students. In fact, going through this topic in EDU642 has made me realize I should be including a unit on design principles with my students and I now will be including it in my upcoming curriculum. Which I think will be a welcome addition.

One area of the Copyright unit that I found a little odd was in regards to crediting videos being shared from YouTube or other hosting sites, because I don’t believe it’s necessary and shouldn’t be a part of the copyright unit, (I’m speaking about the legality here - I’ll get into ethics in a moment). The reason I felt this way was simply because people don’t use videos the same way they use images they find. Grabbing an image from Google Images to use on your site or Padlet isn’t the same as embedding a video from YouTube. While embedding a video, or sharing a link, people aren’t actually downloading anything, and therefore not copying or making duplicates of the original file, and therefore not infringing on any copyrights. Additionally, these videos that are being embedded are not being taken from YouTube, by virtue of the embed function, which is a function that is provided by YouTube for people to do exactly that: embed in other sites.

Further, all YouTube account holders enter into an agreement whereby when they choose to upload content to YouTube and post it as “Public” or “Unlisted” (basically anything other than “Private”), they are releasing control over how or where it is displayed. I found these excerpts in the YouTube terms of service:

Permissions and Restrictions

You may access and use the Service as made available to you, as long as you comply with this Agreement and applicable law. You may view or listen to Content for your personal, non-commercial use. You may also show YouTube videos through the embeddable YouTube player.

License to Other Users

You also grant each other user of the Service a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to access your Content through the Service, and to use that Content, including to reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works, display, and perform it, only as enabled by a feature of the Service (such as video playback or embeds). For clarity, this license does not grant any rights or permissions for a user to make use of your Content independent of the Service.

My personal suggestion would have been to discuss video ripping as a “no-no” and why ripping a video to use in your own project would be copyright infringement, and then go into detail about Fair Use guidelines and what is actually considered Fair Use, especially because simply displaying/embedding a YouTube video anywhere else has no legal implications.

However, all that being said, ethically I feel citing the creator, as I did in my recent copyright project for this class, is still the right thing to do. However, it may make more sense to mention it under the guise of relating to ethics, and not copyright.

In terms of other moments or topics that stood out to me, I really enjoyed the conversation about Augmented Reality. I appreciated that it was part of the class, as it’s something that is already surrounding us but people don’t know this yet. I firmly believe AR will change the world and revolutionise all industries. There are heaps of examples already available of this happening, there are just some pieces of the puzzle that aren’t ready yet for this to really change the world get. As soon as an affordable wearable device, like a set of AR glasses become commonplace, that’s when the tech will explode and we will see it everywhere. Including education. I see the future of the classroom with students sitting around, all wearing AR glasses and the teacher throwing up 3D renderings of planets, tornadoes, a star system, a human anatomy model… the list goes on. But enough about that (I could go on for hours).

The section on Creativity was awesome, as I’m all about that. And the section on reflection is so integral in my practice, as I teach with the creative process (plan, create, reflect) and I strive to teach my students how important it is to be reflective creators, as their reflections then guide them in their future creations, and this is the main way they grow as creators.

Overall this course has been incredibly stimulating and enjoyable and I was happy to go through each learning activity and deepen my experience and understanding in many of the areas I was already familiar with. I appreciated this class a lot, and most of all, I look forward to using all the content I created in the course with my students, and I hope my future courses are as enjoyable and applicable as this one in my daily practice as a media teacher.