Summary of Learning & Shoutouts to the EC&I 834 Community

Learning By Doing

This past week, we had our final class of EC&I 834: Designing for Online and Blended Learning. I really appreciated how this course was so experiential and project-based. We were introduced to content and able to apply it to our course prototypes right away. Some of the topics we explored included:

• Blended Learning
• The Learning Management System (LMS)
• Creating a Course Profile
• Examples of Engaging Content Modules
• Ed Tech Tools for Online Instruction and Assessment
• Instructional Design Models
• Open Educational Resources (OERs)
• Peer Feedback on Course Prototypes
• Evaluating Online Courses and Modules
• Community in Online Learning
• Considerations in Online Learning (accessibility, cultural/ideological, pedagogical, and the role of school)

Curtis Bourassa and I worked together to apply the course content to our Treaty Education and Minecraft Course Prototype. It is still a work in progress and we are excited to continue developing it! We are both currently taking the Teaching Treaties in the Classroom training through the Office of the Treaty Commissioner, so we will take our learning from the four sessions and apply them to the course as well.

Summary of Learning

Curtis and I also worked together on our “Sucked into Minecraft” Summary of Learning video. We had a lot of fun building a Minecraft world to represent our learning, creating our own characters using Minecraft Skin Editor, writing the script, using a third account to film in Minecraft to create a third-person view, designing images in Canva, creating visual effects using Adobe After Effects, and finally, editing the video in Camtasia.

Shoutout to Dr. Couros

Shoutout to Dr. Alec Couros for creating the environment for a safe and collaborative learning community! He did this by:

• Taking time at the start of class to ask how we were doing or have us share about our weeks
• Creating spaces for collaboration on the blog hub, Twitter, Discord, and shared documents
• Using breakout rooms often so we could have discussions and share feedback in smaller groups
• Encouraging people to share their thoughts, perspectives, course prototypes with the large group
• Making everyone feel that they are important and their contributions are valued
• Bringing in guest speakers to share their knowledge and experiences with us
• Showing that he cares about our mental health by checking in and being flexible

Thanks for everything, Alec! We so appreciate you!

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Shoutout to the EC&I Community

I’m grateful for everything I learned from peers in this course and for the new friends I made this semester! I want to give shoutouts to a few people who contributed to my learning in this course:

• Shoutout to Curtis for being my biggest support this semester! He was so patient when teaching me how to play Minecraft, even though I’m sure it was pretty painful at the start. Curtis spent hours learning how to use Adobe After Effects because he was determined to make the teleporting in our summary of learning look real. Finally, he deals with my procrastination tendencies like a champ and always helps me stay on track.
• Shoutout to Amanda for always being willing to share her experiences and high-quality work with the class. Her website, Digital Literacy for Kids, is an incredible resource to help younger students develop digital literacy skills. She was friendly, supportive, open to questions, and humble about her awesome work.
• Shoutout to Trevor and Matt for sharing their blended learning course for Grade 8 Physical Education! They used Microsoft Teams and Class Notebook for their LMS, which is what Curtis and I used to teach our course as well. It was helpful to see how they organized their content so effectively on these platforms.
• Shoutout to Catherine for sharing her Exploring the Elements of Art: Grade 3 Arts Education Unit course prototype with me in one of our breakout rooms. Her beautiful WordPress website was part of what inspired us to host our course prototype on WordPress to share it more broadly.
• Shoutout to Jamie for creating an incredible open-access course called philosophyquest to explain philosophies of research for grad students! During class, she shared some of the instructional videos she created using an animation tool called Vyond. I appreciated how she broke down complex topics and made her WordPress site so visual.
• Shoutout to Kelly for the support and encouragement she offered to everyone in this class through her consistent blog comments! I also appreciated that she shared her experiences from having a Master’s in Adult Education as well as her talent for visual design with Canva, PowerPoint, and Microsoft Word.
• Shoutout to Curtis Norman for being so encouraging when we shared parts of our course prototype! I really appreciated his positive feedback. He was always excited to share the ideas he was learning on Twitter and the new things he was trying with his students.
• Shoutout to Jennifer for putting 110% into everything that she does! The summary of learning she created for EC&I 833 – The Museum of Educational Technology – inspired us to build our summary of learning in Minecraft. She always stayed after class to brainstorm ideas and help others problem-solve.

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There are so many more people who I learned from this semester! I could go on and on, but I think I’ll try to wrap up here. Thank you all so much for contributing to this incredible community. I look forward to staying connected with all of you!