Month: March 2018

There’s no rush. This week in the Ontario Extend East Cohort, we are kicking off the Collaborator Module. There’s a high chance that you haven’t finished any of the previous three, yet. And that is more than okay.

This is open learning. The modules are there waiting for you to go back to them when you’re ready.

One of the main influences to the way Ontario Extend was built and is delivered is something called ds106, a wonderful community/way of life. Its content is all about Digital Storytelling and it grew out of a more traditional course at the University of Mary Washington. We mimic much of the structure of ds106 through our Daily Extend, Activity Bank and, most importantly, by asking participants to house their work on their own domains so that we can syndicate it all to our Domains page. In fact, the person that built the WordPress themes that make this happen for ds106, did it for us, too! Thanks CogDog! What a treat it was for me to get to work directly with him.

I started in on ds106 as an open participant in Fall of 2015 and there are still a couple modules I haven’t been through yet. I have every intention of doing so. But because I am a part of that community (#ds1064life), I feel no rush to get through it all. I don’t want to move on. I moved in.

I’m lucky to have a nice and healthy PLN and I owe its inception to ds106. I hope that what we have tried to bring from ds106 to Ontario Extend can do similar things for you. DS106 contributes to a PLN simply due to asking that everything we do be in the open. So I got to know the others involved in it. I followed others liberally on Twitter, curated a blog roll, read those blogs, commented on them. Following someone who interests you gives you a glimpse into their network, too. Many of the leaders in ed-tech and pedagogy whose thinking excites and influences me now are only known to me because I saw that they were followed by other ds106ers and I checked them out. As you make new connections to people who interest you, their influences must be interesting, too. As you can see (look at the sidebar to the right if you’re on a desktop/laptop) by the not-at-all frightening doll/friend who authenticates me as an official character of the Internet, the connections themselves can be very interesting.

We hope that, by being involved in Extend, you can expand and super charge your PLN. My advice, should you want to heed it, is just to start walking towards the things that interest you and get to know the people there. No running.

So head on over to the Collaborator module and let the wonderful creators of it (Michel Singh from Collège La Cité and Joanne Kehoe of  McMaster University) guide you to start pumping up your PLN. See you there!

“Discovery Walk” flickr photo by Mark Morgan Trinidad B https://flickr.com/photos/markmorgantrinidad/6191026012 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

This tiny post is a response to the Ontario Extend Technologist module activity “Tell a Tiny Tech Tale” where you share a little software thing that you find helpful.

Mine is not new and likely widely known, but I just use it so much and it is a very satisfying tool to use:

The Format Painter aka Make This Look Like That.

Select some stuff that you like the look of for something else, click on the format painter, and then select your target. It will automatically change the format allowing you to remain blissfully unaware of what font/size/heading etc. it even is.

You can find the format painter in any of the Office products and all the Google Drive thingies. Look for a little paintbrush.

“painter” flickr photo by tinou bao https://flickr.com/photos/tinou/453593446 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

This post is a response to the What’s In It For Me? activity in the Ontario Extend Teacher for Learning Module.

Brainstorm a list of WIIFM (what’s in it for me?) from a student perspective.

If you can’t think of more than “because you should know it,” then you need to talk to your students and get a better sense of where they are in their learning and where they are going.

So I will WIIFM from the perspective of someone who might be thinking of starting (or continuing) through the Extend modules, in what I think is screenplay form:

(YTQE – You, the Questioning Extender; OEP- Ontario Extend, personified)

Two figures enter stage right, dressed to the nines and looking quite dashing.

YTQE: Why should I do this Ontario Extend thing?

OEP: Well, since it’s an open and shared experience, you have the opportunity to expand your professional learning network.

YTQE: Hmm, that’s nice. What else?

OEP: You get to be a part of investing in and growing a bank of teaching and learning activities that anyone can use. Including you, obviously.

YTQE: And then?

OEP: Also, there’s the benefit of working with a whole bunch of tools and technologies, like running your own domain, hopefully expanding your own personal “toolkit”.

YTQE: Please give me more.

OEP: Well, no matter how much time and effort (or lack thereof) you put in to it, we still consider you a part of the community so… membership in a community like the East Cohort, for example.

YTQE: More.

OEP: The opportunity to have some simple fun by interacting with your new professional learning network by trying out the short and sweet Daily Extend activities on a semi-regular basis.

YTQE: I’m gonna need more than that.

OEP: Well, to go back to the basics, we’ve posted the six modules with an open licence (CC-BY-NC-SA) so you can take them and use them in your own conext in your own institution if you’d like.

YTQE: Cool, cool. You got anything else?

OEP: Umm… Oh! If you do all the activities in the module, we can give you a badge! And if you do them all, you get the Super Extend badge!

YTQE: Okay yes, these are all cool. But what about socks?

OEP: (mumbles) The socks are all gone.

One figure exits stage left, the other reaches out as the lights dim. 

image credit: “Theater” flickr photo by Hitchster https://flickr.com/photos/hitchster/8754280878 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

I was just sitting there making my way through the Ontario Extend Teacher for Learning module, and lo and behold! I see a link that says “Take it to The Bank”. What’s this then? I put my take on the activity right there? Ok! This is my response!

Misunderstood

Identify a concept that is often misunderstood in your discipline. Can you think of an analogy that can help make the concept make sense to students?

My discipline is educational technology so the first thing that comes to mind is more like a misconceived idea than a singular concept that is misunderstood. That idea is the pervasive thought that technology is progressing faster and faster than ever and that we MUST KEEP UP!

That’s just stress inducing. Let’s chill out. We’re still finding out wonderful, fun, cutting-edge uses of trailing-edge technologies. The Extend program itself is kind of doing that. We’re blogging and tweeting! That’s not new! But it can be so engaging and extending, so let’s start doing that afresh together, in the open.

Have a look at this talk by Audrey Watters from the Digital Pedagogy Lab in PEI from 2016 where she makes it clear that, no, technology is not advancing faster than ever and taking a step back and thinking about why were are using it is a pretty stellar idea.

The tortoise beats the hare, all the time. See it happen in real life.

p.s. is that a turtle, or a tortoise in the image above?

“IMG_20130616_132818_v2” flickr photo by Chasing Light Photography (Chris Martin) https://flickr.com/photos/14798455@N06/9066171055 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license