Week 9: Case Study Presentations

All of the case studies that were presented in class this week were fantastic. The one that really stood out for me though was the case study regarding the integration of blended learning in a college. I am teaching grade 12 college chemistry next semester, and this case study has made me critically look at how I plan to teach this course. If my students need to be prepared for a blended learning model, then I want to ensure that I'm preparing them as much as possible while they are still in high school. I know that most colleges use an LMS (Learning Management System) so I'm wondering if I should use an LMS (Brightspace by D2L is used by most Ontario school boards) instead of Google classroom?

The Bigger Picture

I have noticed that all of the case studies so far are focused around one major topic: change and resistance to that change. Leadership is really all about relationships and cultivating those relationships to break down the barriers and fears around change. In my current leadership role, I've also noticed that building and maintaining relationships with your team members MUST be a priority in order to build an environment where people are willing to take risks and try something new. I think this really speaks to how profound the Diffusion of Innovations theory by Rogers is to leadership. It is also intertwined with communities of practice, and Bransford's "How People Learn". I suspect that these themes will continue in the case studies that will be presented in class next week; I'll be interested to see if this hypothesis is correct.

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Week 2: The Innovation-Policy Gap

This week's readings were focused on digital privacy. It is clear from from both Davis (2014) and Leatham & Robertson (2017 ) that there exists some major discrepancies between innovation, the use of technology in education, and policy. In particular, as I was reading the Leatham & Robertson (2017) article, I began to question my own practices and choices of digital tools in the classroom... do they protect student digital privacy or am I unknowingly putting my students at risk here? I will certainly be examining the digital tools that I choose much more closely to ensure that this is not the case. I found the following quote from Leatham & Robertson (2017) particularly interesting: "Teachers, and in particular, early adopters appear to be caught in the cross-currents of multiple and contradictory technology imperatives" (p. 3). This quote really caught my eye because it is linked to the leadership theory that I am working on with my group for Assi...

Week 10: More Case Study Presentations

This week, we continued with the case study presentations in class. My group presented our case study on moving towards online final assessments in high school eLearning courses. It was an interesting and positive experience; however, there were some negative aspects to how this was set up in the course that I'd like to explore here. First, our group found that it was a challenge to get the rest of the class up to the same level of knowledge as we had about our case study. It felt like we spent the majority of the breakout time just getting everyone up to speed that it really took away from the rich discussions that began to occur during the last portion of the breakouts. We provided our case study presentation via blackboard email a few days prior to class; however, no one likely reviewed it before our presentation. I'm not even sure how this could be improved upon but I found that this was a reoccurring theme. Also, people need wait time to process...

Week 3: Group Work

I used to really hate and dread anything to do with group work. I've had some pretty horrible experiences in the past, even as recent as during my B.Ed. For my biology curriculum course, we needed to plan out an entire unit (on plants) and ALL of the work was basically left for me to complete. It was the most frustrating group work experience that I've had to date - aren't teachers supposed to collaborate and work together? If teachers themselves can't do this, how do we expect it of our students? BUT... over the past year and a half, as I've been working on completing my M.Ed. at UOIT, my opinion of group work has done a complete 180. My mindset has changed for a few reasons; I have gained a better understanding of social constructivist learning theories and I have experienced what and how collaborative learning should be implemented in education. This past week, I have focused on working on assignment 2 with my group. We have been develop...

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