Educating Tech-Fluent Teachers in Active Classrooms and Online

Educating Tech-Fluent Teachers in Active Classrooms and Online

от Ryan Hazen -
Number of replies: 3

Hi all!

I'm the results of a project I worked on in 2017 in which we created small collaborative groups of teachers to experiment with various EdTech. We had four groups focused on the following tools:

Sandbox Classroom (A custom Active Learning Space)

Moodle Forum

Nearpod

Video production for content delivery 

While their conclusions were valuable, I think the best outcome was actually the collaboration itself. Two years later, these teachers still engage with one another across disciplinary boundaries to improve their teaching outside of the formal structure of a program like this. I am wondering if anyone has had success in creating similarly collaboration-centric teacher development models, and if so how they were structured. 

I am attaching a video of a presentation on the active learning classroom part of this program and the PDF report including the teachers' feedback and conclusions. 

In reply to Ryan Hazen

Re: Educating Tech-Fluent Teachers in Active Classrooms and Online

от philippe petitqueux -

Hi Ryan,

I work for agricultural education in France as a delegate in Normandy. We have a national program called acoustice. 

Acoustice is a support and training program for educational teams in the use of digital technology in agricultural education. It aims to facilitate the creation of learning communities , whether local, regional or national. It offers tools, resources and online spaces for training and collaboration, in face-to-face or online. 

It is animated by a network of actors working together:

  • local EdTech referents (computer teachers, Technicians, ...);
  • regional delegates; 
  • inspectorate and public agricultural higher education institutions.

Acoustice is open to the ones who wish to be actors of their continuous professional development by learning, experimenting and collaborating with their peers.

Of course, it's build around a central Moodle Platform.

We recently radically changed our way of thinking this program by introducing some recognition and tools for it : 

- Open badges

Hereunder you can read a guideline in english version that explains the ideas.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xcPIsoenuWaFhQU76wr1epmdMInoZDPLlaAigTgQ4ko/edit?usp=sharing

We just started, so not much to say for now, but the feedback from our community is good.

https://acoustice.educagri.fr/mod/book/view.php?id=452&chapterid=1159

Feel free to comment or correct my bad english намигване


Philippe

In reply to philippe petitqueux

Re: Educating Tech-Fluent Teachers in Active Classrooms and Online

от Ryan Hazen -
Hi Phillipe!

Your english is excellent (certainly better than my French!), so I have no complaints.

Thanks for sharing your work with Acoustice. I think badging is particularly valuable in society-critical industries like agriculture. While there should be some way to track people's learning and skills in these areas, it's a terrible idea to give control over those credentials to institutions that are profit-driven. That only makes it more expensive to get involved in agriculture, which in turn makes it more expensive to buy food, which is bad for everyone. I like the idea of using open badges for industries like this. I especially like that it is built around a Moodle core!

I love that courses can be offered directly on the Acoustice platform. That's a major bonus - it allows users to create learning without needing the "blessing" of an institution. Is there also an e-portfolio component, like Mahara, attached or is it just the Acoustice dashboard? This is just an interest of mine, I am looking for E-portfolio examples from around the world. I'm interested to build this up further in my local work.

Anyway, thanks for sharing, I particularly like the examples you have included of how individuals use these badges (Fabien, Sophie, etc). That really helps people understand the purpose of badging. I think it's lost on a lot of people.
In reply to Ryan Hazen

Re: Educating Tech-Fluent Teachers in Active Classrooms and Online

от philippe petitqueux -

Thanks Ryan.

There is a Mahara instance, but not very used by our teachers. We are now promoting the Open badge passport (https://github.com/discendum/salava), as a new type of eportfolio. 

With open badge passport, you can create small pages on which you can display text, files and badges.

Open badges can be seen as micro-portfolios, with some big advantages : 

  • the endorsements you can get
  • the portability
  • the connections with the community (I'm connected to the ones who have the same badge as me)

But, Mahara or other ePortfolios can work well with badges. For example, I can use a collection of Mahara pages as evidence in my badge.

Phil.