Video Showcase for ELA Media Curators

The Media Development Centre within the Curriculum team hosted a video showcase to celebrate the finale of our pilot project- English Language Arts Media Curation (MD0001). Thank you to all CEFL faculty and the Learning Resource Services department who joined us for the event!

 Media curation is the art – rather than the act – of sorting out the vast amounts of educational videos on YouTube and organizing them around a specific educational topic in a coherent way. 

We thought that a video showcase was a great way to celebrate all the hard work our English language arts instructors have done as media curators. Please watch Focus Brings Success PPT to learn more about media curation. 

For the past four months five ELA instructors, including Jennefer Rousseau, Susan Lemmer, Murray Ronaghan, Meghan Clayton, and Tasha Nott, have been searching for effective instructional videos on YouTube. As a result, there are currently 6 playlists with over 30 instructional videos residing on the CEFL YouTube channel. This pool of videos, divided into specific courses, is now available for all ELA instructors’ use.  

  During the event, Jennefer, Susan, and Murray shared their experiences as media curators, and talked about the challenges and benefits of the project. They also addressed specific videos and explained their choices (see the best curated videos here). 

The Media Development team would like to thank all English Language Arts media curators who participated in the project and made it successful!

My First MOOC Experience: “Online Instruction for Open Educators” by World Wide Ed

Click on the image below to see in full size.  More detail will then be visible.

This manifesto, part of the MSc in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh, was one of the readings for Module 1 and is from http://onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.com/ .  I don't necessarily agree with all of this, but it is food for thought.

Knowledge shared is collaboration dared.

  -- MOOC participant

I decided to take a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) for the first time to get some more perspective on the considerable media coverage we are seeing about this approach to education. 

I enrolled in “Online Instruction for Open Educators,” provided by World Wide Ed, a Canadian non-profit organization that has a mission to “Deliver well-designed and effective online courses and open education resources to diverse learners around the world.”  The academic advisory board includes Tony Bates, author of eleven books in the field of online learning and distance education.  The purpose of the course was “to help you build and improve your skill in online teaching.“

The course developed skills to:

• Lead online learning and facilitate a community of practice
• Apply current adult and distance learning theory to your teaching strategies
• Utilize a variety of online teaching tools, including open education resources
• Design engaging and effective online practice activities
• Network and collaborate more effectively with other educators

I attended the sessions I was interested in, and participated in the discussions and twitter feeds that were most relevant to my projects and needs.  Copious links to a wide array of resources and software that Canadian educators are actually using were posted.  I felt like a delegate at a conference when touring the site and participating in sessions and discussion forums.

The course was divided into six modules:

1.  Introduction to MOOCs
What is a MOOC?

2.  Theory and Practice, by Terry Anderson of Athabasca University
There was a fascinating discussion about Personal Learning Environments  (PLEs)
Look at this Grade 7 student’s PLE built using http://www.symbalooedu.com/ .

3.  Technology in Education

4.  Learning in Our Age of Abundance, by Dave Cormier, who has “the terrible burden of being the person who originally coined the term MOOC.”   He helped facilitate the very first MOOC with Stephen Downes and George Siemens.  Dave talked about how knowledge has been stored and conveyed in different modes throughout history:  First orally, then catechetically, then through textbooks (which may be going away for good), and now digitally.
Self-assessment and self-remediation
Learning in a time of abundance – historical background

5.  Building a Networked Identity

6.  Mixing it up and Putting it All Together-

Don’t miss the next free MOOCs offered by World Wide Ed!

Winter 2014:  Personal Learning Environments facilitated by Stephen Downes (one of the inventors of the MOOC concept)

Spring 2014:  Open Course Design Using Open Tools

Regards,
Michael
My previous blog postings

JAM December 2013

At the Joint-Applicant Management meeting, announcments about technology changes were made.  

The college will have new phones by Monday.  Over time, meeting rooms and classrooms will gain phones.  With the new system, you will need to dial 8 instead of 9.  Your voice mail will appear in Outlook.  Be sure to transcribe your voice messages prior to Friday as they will disappear.   Another feature will allow you to login at another phone, except for a classroom, so you can receive your calls there. You will be able to change your location in agresso self service so people can call you and find you.  A new application connected to this new phone system, Jabber, ,will allow us to do desktop sharing, do instant messaging with video support, and see someone's availablitly based on their Outlook calendar.

New wireless clocks coming soon.

Desire2Learn will be upgraded to a new version on January 1, 2014.  More information regarding new features to follow.

SharePoint planning for college use continues.  Prototypes to be out hopefully before Christmas break.

Adobe site licensing for the Creative Cloud being investigated.  This license would allow the college to better track installations and manage upgrades.

Russell Arsenault, from the Office of Institutional Analysis, demonstrated Qlikboard and the reports and dashboards now available on application and enrolment data.  The application appears very user-friendly and would provide easy visual access to make staffing and budget decisions based on this data.

Sharing

Sharing involves risk. In an individualistic society powered by competition, we are afraid to show our work and express our ideas. Many of us do not want to deliver a workshop to our colleagues for fear that we will be judged and expose ourselves to public criticism. We do not consider ourselves experts.  Many of us write poems in our notebooks or draw pictures in our sketchbooks, but we show them only to our trusted inner circle as we do not want to be labelled different or have our emotions therein conveyed dismissed or rebuked. Without our intent, our gifts and talents shrivel up unfed and watered.

Yet, we must share as it is sharing that moves us forward.  Gutenberg created the printing press to share the Bible with the masses.  Scientists derived a standard tag structure for documents called HTML so that their research findings could be linked and distributed to the world community on a network to be later called the internet.

Sharing seeds new ideas and nurtures strong concepts. Thomas Edison holds many patents for many famous and important inventions.  These inventions were made by teams exchanging ideas and conducting experiments together to find that creative spark. Brainstorming sessions done well maximize the input allowing us to see more. Ideas spring from other ideas.  Excitement builds from the exchange. A framework takes shape and a strong concept blooms.

In the end, sharing is natural.  As friends, our relationships are premised on a mutual exchange of thoughts, feelings, stories and understandings.  Families share meals and support.  Parents share their wisdom while children their awe of life. Teachers share their knowledge so students will grow and share it with others. Sharing is what we were made to do.

You must be brave.  Our students have come forward and taken risks. We must work hard to provide open learning, distributed learning and differentiated instruction: ways to  share and remove the barriers. The world's problems, from pollution to world hunger, have become so large that they can only be solved through sharing.  We need to foster sharing and be a living example.  In this dark night, we must pass on the torch.

Take the step.  Present at the next pd day with a partner.  Imagine everyone in the audience with bald heads.  Post your opinion on the On the Same Page blog.  Know that you are not the only one to do so. Assemble a team and complete an applied research project on best practices to be shared with community colleges across the province and beyond. And after such hard work, celebrate together at a potluck. Create a Google doc and hit the share button. Sit back and watch your collaborators type ideas and comment positively on each other's contribution.  Surround yourself with good people.