Category: EdTech

Communication Through Mattermost

On 23 November 2020

selective focus photography of person using smartphone

Hello everyone!

Today I am going to be talking about a communication app called Mattermost.

I was introduced to this app through my EDCI 336 course at UVic. Mattermost is a self-hostable online chat service that brings all your team communication into one place. As a class, we are able to talk together through our course back channel. It really helps us to chat about class work and other relevant information pertaining to our course.

Additionally, as a cohort, we have set up other channels for each of the classes we are in this semester. Using Mattermost has been such an effective way of collaborating with each other and discussing assignments, courses, etc.

Using Mattermost has also been an efficient way of managing group projects. We have found ourselves having so many group projects this semester and we are able to keep track of them all by creating private channels with members of our groups. Here, we can discuss ideas and plans for our projects in one confined place.

Because of the effects of COVID-19 on this school year, we have all of our courses online. As a result, we have not been able to all meet up all together as our cohort. Some of us see each other on Wednesday’s during our school observations, however, this is only half of our class. Mattermost has been our cohort’s way of building a community with each other. We will continue this in the new year with creating additional channels that align with our next courses.

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash.com

Week 10 Reflection

by sarahdolezal

On 13 November 2020

In edci336, EdTech

colored pencil lined up on top of white surface

Today’s class started off by debriefing and sharing our thoughts about last weeks EdCamp.

After listening to each other’s experiences, we transitioned into our week 10 topic which is Inclusive Education Assistive Technologies. Linked here is a blog post one of my instructors created on this topic for lots of additional information.

To lead us through this topic, we had the pleasure of listening to Tracy Humphreys talk with us about her experiences. Tracy is the founder and chair of BCEdAccess. This started as a private group of Facebook and is completely volunteer run. The purpose of BCEdAccess is to serve the families of students with disabilities and complex learners all over the province of BC.

Tracy started off by telling us what her group hears from parents. These include:

Denial of tech – can’t get FM systems, won’t allow students to use AAC
Tech is always outdated
Access to tech is hard and still problematic
There’s no central keeper of knowledge around tech at a school or in the district, usually.
There’s no supports to learn how to use the tech for parents, especially a bigger issue now with COVID but always important

Tracy shared her own personal story about her son’s struggles and mentioned how difficult it is for family’s to access support. She talked about how parents always try to advocate for their children, but it’s hard to do that if you don’t know everything going on with their child.

She then talked about the things we can do to assist a student’s needs?

Read IEP
Ask family
Ask student
What do you have available? What can you get? What will you need to advocate for?

Photo by Jess Bailey on UnSplash.com

Week 9 Reflection

by sarahdolezal

On 6 November 2020

In edci336, EdTech

Today in EDCI 336, we participated in an EdCamp. An EdCamp is where you can move from room to room when you feel like it, and participate in the topic you choose. Linked here is the post about our EdCamp with all the rules and room topics.

people sitting down near table with assorted laptop computers

The room I decided to go to first and ended up spending my whole time in, was about “how to use group work in the classroom.”

We started off not really knowing what to do, talk about, or the process of how this EdCamp worked. But eventually, one person stepped up and began the conversation by asking a question about our experiences with group work. This was the starting point of our conversation that carried on very nicely through many different topics in this category.

Here is our rooms google doc that we contributed to, and below I have listed the notes I took regarding group work.

How to use group work in the classroom:

Cons:
- Easy to do what you’re comfortable with and not help with every aspect
- Ensure an even workload
- Can’t split off and have 2 people focusing on different topic
- Hard to talk with interrupting and talking over since it’s hard to hear online

Ways to combat these:
- Frame group work that everyone’s in it together, and work as a team (unit)
- Have an open communication line between group members
- Assign each person a different role in the group – all contribute equally

As a teacher, would you use group work?
- Group work is a good way to build soft skills (leadership, teamwork, etc)
- Build connections

How to grade group work?
- Base on group, but individual assessment – anonymous
- Not all people work well together – get feedback on group members and on self assessment
- Could have groups could create a document on what specifically each person contributed to the project
- Ensuring to allot time for group work to be done in class – observe and talk with students on what they’re working on and where they’re pulling their weight
- At the start of a project, have each group create a plan/document where students can identify what each person’s role is in the group

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash.com

Week 8 Reflection

by sarahdolezal

On 30 October 2020

In edci336, EdTech

people sitting on grass field

In today’s class, we experienced a dialogue circle for the first time for many of us.

Dialogue circles can be used in classrooms with everyone sitting in a circle facing each other. Today, we did it over zoom and it still worked very well. In most cases, there is some sort of a talking stick that goes around person to person, which lets everyone know who has the floor to talk. For us, we just had everyone else muted while the main person was speaking. The purpose of dialogue circles is to facilitate open and and direct communication in a safe place.

For our class, we used it as a way to check in on a scale from 1-5 of how we were feeling and to share any thoughts we had in general, and about our 336 class. There was no pressure to self-report which was nice and calming. I was initially planning on sharing my feelings with my classmates, however, as more and more people went, I felt as though I shouldn’t. This is because a lot of people said they were feeling like a 2 and were very overwhelmed with the amount of work we have. For me personally, I feel very close to a 5 right now, and I have pretty much felt this way the entire semester. I have managed to stay on top of all my assignments and due dates that go along with them. I can understand where people are coming from because it is a lot of work, but I just don’t feel overwhelmed with it like most others. This is why I didn’t feel comfortable sharing since I didn’t want to make others feel bad about where they were.

I did really enjoy the concept of dialogue circles and hearing about how everyone was feeling. It definitely brought the class together with people realizing they aren’t alone in how they’re feeling.

Since the class, I have been trying to brainstorm of ways I can incorporate dialogue circles into my future physical and health education classes.

Photo by Ben Douchac on Unsplash.com

Week 6 Reflection

by sarahdolezal

On 16 October 2020

In edci336, EdTech

love to learn pencil signage on wall near walking man

In today’s class, we had the pleasure of listening to Jeff Hopkins speak on the school he created – PSII. It was fascinating to look at the blog post and watch the videos of the school. Currently, it’s set up quite different than normal due to COVID. For example, they can’t use the kitchen, so they’ve turned that space into a room where students can sit and work together. They have also decided to rent out space outside of their normal school space just so that they can increase the distance between students during COVID.

I find this school so interesting because it’s all built on inquiry – everything starts with questions. This is great since one person’s inquiry can lead to multiple new questions from other students as well. Which can therefore bring multiple people together.

From a teacher candidate’s perspective, it’s awesome to see how the school is built on teacher collaboration. Teachers will have their one or two specific subject areas and if a student has a question about something outside of those areas, then teachers have the ability to collaborate with each other. The school is set up for this purpose, since there’s no formal classes with teachers. This gives them the flexibility to go and collaborate right when students need assistance.

Overall, it was super informative and thought-provoking to hear Jeff speak to our class today!

Photo from Unsplash.com by Tim Mossholder

Week 5 Reflection

by sarahdolezal

On 9 October 2020

In edci336, EdTech

Today’s topic of discussion in class was about Modality in Education. We talked about the different modes of instruction, which include:

Synchronous Face to Face
Synchronous online
Blended synchronous
Asynchronous
Blended

Synchronous learning, if you are unsure of the term, is learning that is done live and at the same time. This can incorporate whole group time, breakout groups during class, and 1-1 connections.

Asynchronous learning is not learning at the same time. Examples of this include emails, backchannels such as Mattermost, learner blogs, and Trello.

We are currently experiencing different modes of learning in our EDCI 336 class by having 1 hour of synchronous class time on zoom, followed by 1 hour of synchronous decentralized pods, and then 1 hour of asynchronous learning.

I think it’s extremely important for classes and schools to offer student choice with different modalities of learning. This would accommodate for different students’ needs and accessibility problems. Ultimately, everyone should be included and schools should have flexible designs with learning modalities.

Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

Week 3 Reflection

by sarahdolezal

On 28 September 2020

In edci336, EdTech

This week in class we had the pleasure of having Jesse Miller speak to us about social media and our presence online. His message really resonated with me and gave me an opportunity to think about my online presence and how I want to be perceived in a professional way. Especially with wanting to teach secondary students, they have so much access to the internet nowadays and they have every avenue to look you up online. After class, I spent lots of time going through and making certain profiles private so that I can keep my personal life private. I have yet to create any professional accounts but that is still something I am thinking about and how I would go about using it.

Mr. Miller also talked about the use of technology with younger generations and how you can possibly bring it into the classroom instead of trying to avoid it. A quote that really stuck with me from the presentation was that “Parts of the guidance role in the 21st century isn’t preparing kids for a reality of the past.” This means not sending students to the library to look for a book, but instead having them dive into the internet. Mr. Miller encourages teachers to use technology in their classrooms as well as address social media concerns and have an open dialogue with students.

After listening to this wonderful and thought-provoking presentation, I have started thinking about ways that I want to incorporate technology into my classroom in the future.

Week 2 Reflection

by sarahdolezal

On 18 September 2020

In edci336, EdTech

In class today we shared our thoughts after watching “Most Likely to Succeed” and I thought I would share some of our discussions around it.

The overall consensus was that we all loved the film and were so inspired by the type of learning they did in High School High. It was a fresh and exciting approach to education with a project based learning and assessment. It was so great to see the use of multiliteracies and cross curricular systems in school. Which relates very well to our other courses we are currently taking, so it gives us great real-life examples of how these are applied.

However, we did see some holes with the boy who was in charge of his group for the rise and fall of civilization project. Some of us thought that maybe the teacher should have stepped in sooner to help put the boy get on track and advise him to not make it so complex with the time frame they had. But on the other hand, he probably would not have learned the same hard lessons if the teacher had stepped in.

It was also important to note how the system they were using in High School High had not been in use for very long, so there is not sufficient research to support that this way of learning is effective over the “normal” system in schools.

After watching this film, it definitely opened my eyes to different ways of learning and assessing in schools. It also gave me the opportunity to begin wondering how I can implement some of these ideas into my teaching one day.

We also discussed Privacy and Safety principles, including FIPPA. It was insightful to learn about this and then read all about on my own time after class. We also spent a little time discussing copyright and intellectual property. I used my knowledge of this in this post by using a picture from unsplash.com. This website allows you to use their pictures without worrying about copyright.