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Good morning and welcome to winter’s early start. Gone are the summer BBQs and days on the water; oh, and what is that jingling we are hearing again?
Now that we are past the rush of October conferences and counting down the weeks to the holidays, there are still a few professional learning events to consider in case you still have some PD money left. CANeLearn will be moderating a panel at the December 5-6 EdTech Summit in Vancouver/Coquitlam and will be at the 2nd annual DLAC in Austin (Feb.24-26) presenting and networking. The DL Symposium 2020 in Vancouver/Burnaby (Apr. 19-21) will feature a number of #CANeLearn members, board members, and researchers – announcements coming soon.
Michael Barbour, the principal researcher for CANeLearn, has written a series of blog posts published on the K-12 State of the Nation research website about Ontario’s e-learning policy announcement and mandated four e-learning course requirement:
Stay tuned for more on the role that e-learning is playing in policy and funding reforms going on in all provinces. Check out in News below highlights of BC’s review.
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter #CANeLearn, Facebook, or YouTube.
Photos, unless otherwise noted, by @rlabonte or Unsplash
In the News
Welcome, Singular “They”
- APA endorses the use of “they” as a singular third-person pronoun in the seventh edition of thePublication Manual of the American Psychological Association
- Writers should use the singular “they” in two main cases: (a) when referring to a generic person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant to the context and (b) when referring to a specific, known person who uses “they” as their pronoun.
- When referring to a generic person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant to the context, use the singular “they” as the pronoun. For example, if you use nouns like “person,” “individual,” or “everyone” or phrases like “every teacher” or “each nurse” in a sentence, use the appropriate form of the pronoun “they” as needed.
- See more here…
OTESSA Launches
- The Open/Technology in Education, Society, and Scholarship Association (OTESSA) is a new group of post-sec and K-12 researchers including @_valeriei and @veranez (Valerie Irvine and Verena Roberts), long-term supporters of @CANeLearn
- The inaugural conference will be held at the Canadian Congress of the Humanities and the Social Sciences between May 31-June 2, 2020, in London, Ontario, Canada.
- Please see more http://otessa.org
Call for Research Assistance
- Cecil R. Short, Instructor and Doctoral Candidate at Brigham Young University is looking for teachers to sign up for a 45-60 minute online interview starting in January.
- The research is to help in the construction of an OER book that looks at blended practices within various content domains, and then also for research that explores how blended teachers practice online integration, online interaction, data practices, or personalization across domains.
- Contact https://cecilrshort.com or https://twitter.com/CecilRShort
BC Funding Review
- In February 2018 an Independent Review Panel launched consultations with all 60 school districts and independent schools and presented a report to the province in December 2018.
- Four Working Groups from all education representatives and advocacy groups were formed and invited to respond to the recommendations.
- Working Group final reports were presented to the Minister of Education October 2019 which are posted here.
- Final decisions are expected in the new calendar year.
9th Annual Global Education Conference – Online
Future of Learning Forum
- An archive of session presentations, video recordings, and discussion outcomes of the October 7th event
- Sponsored and compiled by the Blockchain Learning Group
- Read it here
iNACOL is now Aurora Institute
- The organization “has grown to examine systems change and education innovation… serving more as a thought leader… to equip and inform practitioners and policymakers who are interested in education transformation”. Details
- In its place, practitioners previously associated with the now defunct iNACOL e-learning mandate have formed their own group, Digital Learning Collaborative, “dedicated to exploring, producing, and disseminating data, information, news, and best practices in digital learning”- CANeLearn’s membership moved from iNACOL here.
- DLAC hosts an annual conference and CANeLearn is on its advisory board and attends/presents.
Resources for the Digital Classroom
Quality Matters Presentation Series
Video presentation series from Quality Matters on topics including:
- Quality and Online Learning
- The Alignment Triangle – Quality and Coursetune
- Quality Standards with SoftChalk
- Tips for Course Design
- Building Engagement
- Standards for Online Courses – What you need to know
- See QM channel and more here
Integrating Indigenous Epistemologies and Pedagogies into Curriculum Design and Development
- Guiding Questions From BCcampus
Interweaving Indigenous approaches should involve considering all of the following aspects of your course design:
- Goals: Does the course goal include holistic development of the learner? If applicable, does the course benefit Indigenous people or communities?
- Learning outcomes: Do the learning outcomes emphasize cognitive, emotional, physical, and spiritual development? Is there room for personalization, group and individual learning goals, and self-development?
- Learning activities: Have you included learning activities that are land-based, narrative, intergenerational, relational, experiential, and/or multimodal (rely on auditory, visual, physical, or tactile modes of learning)?
- Assessment: Is the assessment holistic in nature? Are there opportunities for self-assessment that allow students to reflect on their own development?
- Relationships: Are there opportunities for learning in community, intergenerational learning, and learning in relationship to the land?
- Format: Does the course include learning beyond the classroom “walls”?
See the document for examples of activities posted here.
Accessibility Tips for Online Courses
The University of Washington has published a number of resources to support increasing access to online courses for learners. Some of the highlights include:
- Online Course Accessibility Checklist – a basic list to start here
- From a presentation by Sheryl E. Burgstahler Founder and Director, DO-IT Center and UW Access Technology Center University of Washington “Designing Accessible Cyberlearning: Recommendations & Lessons Learned” (Slidedeck here)
Websites, documents, images, videos:
- Clear, consistent layouts & organization schemes
- Structured headings
- Descriptive wording for hyperlinks
- PDFs avoided; no scanned image PDFs
- Text descriptions of content in images
- Large, bold fonts, uncluttered pages, plain backgrounds
- High contrast color combinations; problematic ones for those who are colorblind avoided
- Content & navigation accessible using keyboard alone
Instructional methods:
- Wide range of tech skills accommodated
- Content presented in multiple ways
- Acronyms/jargon spelled out/defined
- Instructions & expectations clear
- Examples, assignments relevant to a diverse audience
- Outlines, other scaffolding tools provided
- Adequate opportunities for practice
- Adequate time provided for activities, projects, tests
- Feedback on parts & corrective opportunities provided
Adventures in Archives
Joe Sisco’s Keynote from blendED Alberta
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