Digital Course Design in a Nutshell- Eye on the prize!

As our upper school teachers start the process of using Canvas at our school, the tech department has started meeting with them to help them create their courses. Our CTO found a really great Canvas "how to" course in the Commons area of Canvas and we are having our teachers go through these modules and submit assignments throughout the process. The wonderful thing about this is that the process actually leads to the creation of their own courses at the same time. Learning that leads to usable end results!

This past week we started the overview of what Canvas looks like and some teachers chose to jump right in and start the Canvas Camp modules. As I have been reflecting on this week I am excited about the support for our teachers that is embedded in their school day. I am also thankful for the excitement many see in using this new platform.

Some of the questions that keep popping up in my mind in regards to our sessions include:

• What does good digital design look like?
• How does one accomplish the task at hand in a timely manner?
• What should the interface look like from the student view?
• How do we create patterns of efficiency for our teachers, students, and parents that don't  undermine the teacher's autonomy of making the class "their own."

As teachers move forward with creating their Canvas courses, this is a great time to reflect on what you are currently doing and adjust the lessons you might feel need more "uumph." I also think starting this process with some goals and processing steps in mind will be helpful as well. These things came to mind as I assessed teacher interaction this week:

• Collect your resources FIRST. You know what you need to teach your units, put those resources all in one place so that you aren't spending all your time going back and forth looking for the next file. 
• Be mindful of copyright laws. Using PDFs and third-party curriculum can be tricky for online course content. As a rule, if you are unsure a link that takes you to the curriculum outside of your module tends to be the safe bet. Some of our teachers have actually contacted third-party vendors to make sure they are using things the correct way. You might want to look into that. Lastly, as long as it is contained for your students and you haven't made your work public (allowed access to it through the Canvas commons, for example) you tend to be safe.
• What's your timeframe? For our teachers, a timeframe has been placed upon them but if you are like me, it might be a good idea to break that down for yourself so that:
• You aren't overwhelmed in May when that imposed timeframe is checked.
• You can storyboard your goals to help you prioritize the things most important to you.
• You've created the opportunities needed and have the ability to look deeper at the robustness of the LMS and how you might tap into it more
• Check out your course mapping. This is a timely opportunity to make sure the objectives you have tagged in your mapping of your course are actually being taught and met. It's very easy to change part of your classroom goals over time based on new initiatives and feedback and forget to update the mapping. 
• Create your learning objectives and outline a course level module. Make it clear what the expectations are for your students. As you start aligning the objectives with tasks, take a look at Bloom's taxonomy or a Depth of Knowledge (DOK) chart to make sure your objectives are measurable. Each module should probably have 3-5 objectives. Now is your chance to think out your process for teaching your curriculum and have lessons plans made that would allow a sub to step in with embedded direction while you are out with the flu or whatever! It's even possible that if you start the new year out explaining your Canvas class structure to your students, sub days will still be highly interactive learning days. 
• Plan for interaction. Map your modules. You've checked your objective goals for the unit, now how will you get to them? You have a vocabulary to share, overarching ideas to get across, key concepts to tap into, and the ability to use formative and summative assessment. Which parts of what I am trying to accomplish would benefit from this platform? Which parts are expectations of use placed upon me? In Canvas, check out the Commons area on your toolbar. This can allow you to see how other people are using Canvas to create everything from an entire course to the pieces of a module. The Commons allows you to borrow ideas and pull them into your modules and make them your own as well. It's a wealth of help if for nothing more than to kickstart your brain when you are stuck or to see how others are teaching ideas.    The Canvas toolbar for your class gives you some immediate ideas! Do you want to tap into:
• Discussions
• Collaborations
• Assignments
• Quizzes
• Conferences
• Share files, pages, or Google Drive options?                  
•  Get ready to assess. Push your boundaries on what best assessment might look like for the module at hand- perhaps it isn't true/false, multiple choice but maybe it is. Also, take this opportunity to decide what the purpose of your assessments are. Is it to see what the students learned, or is it to see what you and the student need to go over to make sure they know the information forward? Is this formative assessment or summative assessment? Is it for a grade, benchmark or both?  Would a rubric and a speed grader help you give better feedback to your students in a timely manner? Would voice comments help your student? When looking at assessment, look at opportunities for you as an educator to create efficiencies that would allow you more insight into the student learning and time to spend in relational interactions.                                

While you are not currently creating an "online course" you do have the ability to streamline the processes of education that can lead to benefits for both you and your students. Technology will not replace you but looking for ways to replace the tedious might help you to use your time both in and out of the classroom more effectively. 

  Parts of this post adapted from http://ctl.mesacc.edu/teaching/designing-an-online-course/ 

Think Star Trek: Next Generation- Technology as an Accelerator

I don't admit this often but there was a time in my life that I didn't miss an episode of Star Trek: Next Generation. Just for the record, before the judgments begin- I didn't have a Trekie costume nor did I ever go to a convention. This admiration is way before I had decided to be a teacher but the idea of holograph rooms, telaportation, and all the gadgets that went along with planet exploration kept my attention week after week. My "hay day" with being enamored with the show was circa early to mid 1990's. I think back to that time and see how real some of those innovative gadgets on that show really are today. For example:

• Augmented reality and holograph technology is here. It's being used in the classroom to pull students in, to give visuals that have never been available before in 3D/4D ability (for instance http://elements4d.daqri.com)
• Wearable technology is here; the weirdness level will become less weird and the price point will continue to drop. We will see more and more of the population, student and beyond, talking into the watch on their arm or blinking to see incoming emails, texts, or videos. Are we all going to be like "Data"?
• While telaportation for humans isn't here, with the use of Skype, Google Hangouts, and FaceTime we can communicate with each other in real-time meetings. With the very recent invent of Periscope and Meerkat we can also be a part of events anywhere in the world in real-time. It's not telaportation but it's getting there.

What does all this mean? Technology is an accelerator- in life and in the classroom. In twenty or so years since I watched Star Trek: Next Generation in an almost non-believable sense of futuristic nonsense, we are seeing those novelties come to fruition. For many of us, the greatest benefit of technology is that it allows us to get more done in a shorter amount of time- not in a lazy sense of "I don't have to work as hard" but in the sense of "I can focus on other things that I never could before" way.

Technology in an accelerator in terms of flipped learning. Students can watch videos and take pre-assessments as homework the night before a new unit and teachers can spend more time working one-on-one with the students in the midst of processing. This approach takes a day of instruction away because it is done at home and allows teachers to have more flexible time to meet curriculum needs.

Technology is an accelerator in terms of the amount and path of learning for our students. We give students topics for research and with a few key strokes they are on their way to discovering insurmountable amounts of information. They then start narrowing down their topic of choice and quickly curate all that information into usable data for the lesson at hand. What once meant going to the library, seeking the card catalog, perusing a few pages of several books, going back to the card catalog, and repeating now has been streamlined because of "one stop shopping" of research due to the Internet. Technology allows students to dig more efficiently. 

Technology is an accelerator in terms of assessment. Software and apps have intricate algorithms built into them that allows teachers to gather data quickly and often to assess student understanding. Teachers now have the ability to personalize learning more than ever before because of this capability.

Technology is an accelerator in terms of communication. In my entire k-12 experience I never once contacted one of my teachers to ask them a question outside of the school day. E-mail didn't exist, teachers didn't give out their home phone numbers, and the culture was different. Today, technology allows teachers, parents, and students to be in more constant contact (for better or worse) to meet the individual students needs in real-time (or at least in much sooner time) than ever before.

I found this quote on Twitter via Fishtree Education this morning and it inspired this blog: "Curriculum is the road, pedagogy is the driver, technology is the accelerator, passion is the gas, student learning is the destination." I like the overarching attitude about education indicated in this quote.