I’m currently taking a course called Constructivism Strategies for E-Learning as part of my master of educational technology at UBC. We were tasked to host a “Research Cafe” for our colleagues on UBC’s Canvas LMS by designing an online learning environment. My topic was “Virtual Field Trips in a Virtual Learning Environment”, although it could also have been Virtual Field Trips as a Virtual Learning Environment. I used inquiry and collaborative learning as the basis of my cafe, and hopefully provided a space for both of these to occur through the use of map listings, a multimedia virtual field trip and discussion fora where peers collaborated with each other and asked questions based on their prior and current understandings/knowledge. My chosen framework was grounded in Baviskar et. al’s (2009) research which outlined four key elements for constructivist learning: 1) eliciting prior knowledge; 2) creating cognitive dissonance; 3) applying new learning; and 4) reflecting on the learning.
Thank you to Roxanne Metlin, Ed Sutherland, and Wilma Williams for providing audio for parts of the tour!
Click here to visit Kashechewan, Taykwa Tagamou and Chapleau Cree First Nations in Tour Builder (best viewed in Chrome).
You can also click on the hamburger menu at the upper RH corner and choose “Open in Earth” to open in Google Earth:
Google Tour Builder
References
Baviskar, S. N., Hartle, R. T., & Whitney, T. (2009). Essential criteria to characterize constructivist teaching: Derived from a review of the literature and applied to five constructivist-teaching method articles. International Journal of Science Education, 31(4), 541-550. doi:10.1080/09500690701731121
I’m currently enrolled in ETEC 530: Constructivist Strategies for E-Learning through the UBC MET program. We are learning about knowledge, and how it’s constructed and acquired, through a philosophical lens held up by Professor Duncan Pritchard at the University of Edinburgh. The following post was one of our discussion post assignments.
Method:
My task for this particular week was to choose an online concept mapping tool in order to draw a visual representation of linkages between the posts in What is knowledge? My ideas forum, with the readings from Duncan Pritchard. Since I knew I wanted to create a sketchnote and I don’t currently own a stylus to draw on a tablet, I opted for a no-to-low tech option for this assignment. Yes, I used paper and pens. I did use an online word cloud generator by Jason Davies in order to begin my word associations, and this acted as a digital springboard for me. I take word clouds with a grain of salt, as these generators don’t take context into consideration.
I started with the word “knowledge” in the middle of the page. Then, I thought of a brain, so I drew a brain beside the word knowledge. I remembered when I taught the Human Organ Systems unit in Grade 5 Science years ago, and proceeded to split the brain into four parts: Frontal, Parietal, Occipital and Temporal, and labeled and colour-coded them. Then I refreshed my memory (activating my temporal lobe) and researched the parts of the brain, and ended up organizing my canvas into four parts. I thought that I could link Pritchard’s teachings through this type of lens and go from there.
Taking notes by sketching comes naturally to me, and I feel that I organically made linkages because it was a natural process (not to speak in circles). If you’d like to dig deeper into the wonderful world of sketchnoting, I just found this article entitled “50+ Awesome Resources to Create Visual Notes, Graphic Recordings & Sketchnotes”. It is an amazing curation of resources, even if you’ve been sketchnoting for a while! I also love Sylvia Duckworth.
Materials:
Gelly Roll 06 pen (found this one while in Japantown in San Francisco and it is my absolute favourite gel pen)
Sketchbook (mine is a Five-Star Scrap Book with heavyweight paper)
Mr. Sketch markers (for pops of colour and scent!!; although these will bleed through the paper)
Sharpie pens (multiple colours)
Computer with a copy-paste Google Doc of my fellow students’ responses in the What is Knowledge? My Ideas forum, as well as the word cloud I used to generate linkages based on frequently used words/ideas
Walk With Us held our May 3rd meeting at the Timmins Museum’s DGTL Creator Studio. Under the guidance of Tyler Levesque; Julian, Natalie and Neebin learned about lighting techniques using LEDGO equipment and portable reflectors – and therefore how to take the perfect selfie. 😉
Click the Spark story below for a glimpse into our meeting!
It’s finally March, and that means the official start of the seasonal cycle in the Omushkego culture. In the Omushkego Cycle of Life (Ininiwi Pimatisiwin), there are six seasons, beginning with Spring, or Sikwan. Next comes the Blooming of the Earth (Miloskamin), then Summer (Nipin), Autumn (Takwakin), Freezing Up (Mikishaw) and finally, Winter (Pipon).
The Omushkego Cycle of Life model was illustrated by the renowned artist Richard Kamalatisit (1959-2008), image from the Omushkego Education – Mushkegowuk Council Cycle of Life document, Moose Factory, ON
Spring means warmer weather and longer periods of daylight, and the arrival of spring provided much excitement for the Omushkegowuk, according to the Omushkego Cycle of Life document (Omushkego Education Dept). And in the beginning of the Blooming of the Earth season (this begins in May), this was the time to clean up, store winter tools and equipment, and begin preparations for summer.
As we all know and experience in northern Ontario, Spring also reveals the debris hidden beneath the snow from our long winter season – from the coffee cups that once held that delicious dark roast to get us through the work day to the cigarette butts that drivers flick out of their windows. These are obviously examples of some of the negative impacts of human interactions with natural habitats and communities, but whatever types of trash we find, each piece can effectively be turned into data in order to analyze these impacts.
Enter the Litterati app, available on iOS and Android. Litterati started out as an Instagram account dedicated to taking pictures of trash (uploaded with #Litterati), and then taking those already geotagged, time-stamped images and plotting them onto a Google map to visualize this data. Then, others around the world started taking and tagging pictures of trash, until eventually, Litterati became a movement – a way to crowd-source cleaning the planet:
Earth Day is Sunday, April 22nd. A common school activity for the Friday before or Monday after this day will be to supervise students in beautifying their schoolyard or neighborhood as they pick up litter and either recycle or toss it. Why not take it a step further and use technology to record the number and types of trash? Litterati not only allows you to track the quantity of litter, but it also allows you to tag each piece of litter with what it is and even the brand, thereby collecting qualitative data too. And with this data comes questions, which leads to further research, and finally action – a process known as geo-inquiry:
Keep in mind that students need to create their own accounts, and therefore the age rating is 13+, and if under 18, they need to have a parent or guardian’s permission. See the Terms of Service “For Humans” here. One word of caution is that students should not be posting pictures of themselves, as the photos are taken directly through the app and then will be uploaded into the “digital landfill” for use on the interactive map, seen below. Photos should only be of litter, and each photo counts as one piece!
Photos are held in your Litterati gallery until you tag them appropriately and Upload into the Digital Landfill. Maps are updated hourly! Tagging is important because this information is then used to place litter into pollution categories – for example, if you come across a Dasani plastic water bottle, you might tag it using the brand name #Dasani and then #plasticwaterbottle. See below for suggested hashtags.
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The Delta Conservatory, Sacramento Area Creeks Council and the Franklin High School Plastics Club has put together a great guide to use in your own trash mapping efforts – here is a list of hashtags found in their guide:
ALTERNATIVE: This activity can also be done by making your own classroom collaborative map using photos you take with your phone/tablet (with Location services turned on so that said photos are geotagged) and Google My Maps. The image below shows a geotagged photo taken by a phone, and imported into My Maps:
If your photos are backed up by Google Photos (How-To here), you can easily import photos (briefly illustrated here):
You can then easily share your class map on school-approved social media, and even start your own trash mapping hashtag.
NB: If you have multiple photos to upload, you can import them using a CSV file, spreadsheet or KML. More info on this method in a subsequent post!
As part of a new online course at the ACCESS Centre here in Timmins, Ontario, I was asked to give two half-day workshops at the end of the month. The students will learn how to use the Ricoh Theta S camera along with the Google Street View app in order to take 360′ images at Gillies Lake. They will then upload these images into D2L’s ePortfolio app as part of their learning journey. Walk With Us Project will be lending eight 360′ cameras to support this unit. My presenter Slides are below:
I thought I’d create a brief, no-talky screencast about how to embed your own Google Street View images into a WordPress site. You can embed these interactive images into any site that supports iframe; I just demonstrated using WP as I personally use this platform. If you have ever taken 360 photos with your phone or a 360 camera and uploaded to Google Maps, you’ll have a tracking list of these photos in the G Maps menu under “Your Contributions”.
If you haven’t taken these types of photos, you can also find existing ones by searching a location in G Maps and choosing a 360 photo within the knowledge card (indicated by a circular arrow – if it’s a still image, the icon would be a camera). Then you would click on the 3 dots beside the photographer’s information to open a menu, and choose “Share or embed image”. Then, Ctrl-C to copy the code and Ctrl-V to paste into a site of your choosing. To illustrate, I searched for Science Timmins in Google Maps:
Search for a location in Google MapsChoose a 360 photo, click on the 3-dot menu and select “Share or embed image”Ctrl-C to copy the embed code, and Ctrl-V to paste into desired site
Here is the result using a pano I had taken of the Timmins Wake Park in June 2017:
And here’s the silent screencast so you can try it yourself!
Back in December 2016, my proposal to facilitate a 90-minute workshop at the International School of Brussels’ Learning by Design conference was accepted. And so began the presenter’s slideshow frenzy…
Waiting for my flight to Brussels at Pearson with my lunch companion, Google Slides
In preparation, I was asked to plan my workshop with the 4 conference themes in mind:
Engage. Connect. Innovate. Empower.
To me, these are not only themes – they are calls to action; particularly in my current role as an Educational Technology teacher, and certainly in any role in education.
ISB staff and students were heavily involved throughout the conference, and the LbD planning committee, staff and students must be commended on their delivery of a thoughtful, innovative and engaging conference for all attendees. Here is an article about the conference written by LbD student journalists, highlighting a few of the student projects presented on the last day of the conference.
The support I received as a presenter before, during and even after the conference was nothing short of impressive (special shout-out to the IT department for setting me up with Apple TV!). Each of the workshops, panel discussions and break-out groups were thought-provoking, and, more importantly, I had the opportunity to meet some really great people who I hope to keep in touch with for a long time.
ISB educators using 360′ cameras and the Google Street View app
Here are my workshop slides. Educators, you can read about some preliminary research about the mapping/storytelling platform, and try it out in your classroom. If you do, please connect with me!
