Individual to Community Shifts in the CE3 Curriculum using Google Earth

Thank you for reading! I haven't written anything in this space for a while and although I'm supposed to be working on chapters for the PhD, I thought it might be a good exercise to practice writing analytically... I don't want to fall into a hole of description.

This week, I'd like to:

• share some curriculum materials I've been trialling with my Year 9 Earth Science classes
• reflect on a problem and discussion we encountered
• connect this discussion to some educational theory  

So off we go...

In Year 9 we're studying the theory of plate tectonics and natural disasters. This is the first time we've approached the topic seriously. In previous years the National Curriculum was just beginning to be implemented and it was unclear whether we should focus on rocks and minerals and/or plate tectonics. With a better understanding of the National Curriculum as well as completing 2 MOOCs, researching the state of Earth Science education and perusing several textbooks and other resources, I think we've begun to teach Earth Science much more effectively and in a more engaging way that inspires curiosity!

One of the resources, a colleague and I have been exploring is the Cyber Enabled Earth Exploration Curriculum, CE3:

http://www.spatialsci.com/ce3/

This curriculum scaffolds students through some of the powerful features of Google Earth while encouraging them to make observations. Students draw conclusions about the structure of the Earth based on the skill of observation highly valued in Geology.

In our school, Year 9 students are expected to bring a device to class. It could be any brand of tablet or lap top computer. Needless to say, this sometimes makes teaching the content difficult. Some brands work differently than others and time is spent trouble shooting the technology. On the other hand, I think this can be a powerful learning opportunity for students' problem solving skills.

Problem: Students were supposed to click on a radio button to view an animation, but the animation was missing! This happens as newer versions of Google Earth are made available.

Teacher's solution: Search the Internet for another appropriate animation after emailing CE3 staff - who promptly responded with this solution of accessing the URL and putting it into a browser.
                 

The only problem is that the students said that it still didn't work! 

Here's what came up in get info:

                                                       <iframe

                                                       src="http://ge.spatialsci.com/html/ID/3380d6c1"
                                                       width="700"
                                                       height="500" style="border: 0px solid blue;"></iframe>

With a little prompting, it turned out that students were copying and pasting all the code and putting it into the browser. I sat with a student and explained that this is computer code, to which she excitedly said: 'Hey, Lynne knows about that! Look Lynne, code!' We discussed what 'src,' 'width' and 'height' were referring to and how to extract the website from the code. Another student who initially had little interest in solving the problem and opted to find the information on Wikipedia, turned to us and said: 'Yeah, just don't include the quotes!'

Alexander (in Exploring Talk in Schools edited by Mercer and Hodgkinson, 2008) writes about 3 versions of human relations when exploring the relationship between culture, dialogue and learning (p. 96):

• Individualism: the self is placed above others and personal rights come before collective responsibilities, characterised by unconstrained freedom of thought and action. 

• Community: human interdependence, caring for others, sharing and collaborating is emphasised

• Collectivism: also emphasises human interdependence but to serve the needs of society or the state as a whole 

When reading these descriptions of human relations, they sounded familiar to Bakhtin's three-part model of the self: I-for-myself, I-for-others and others-for-me. Individualism reminded me of I-for-myself whereas I-for-others and others-for-me reminded me of the community and collectivism human relations. 

What intrigued me about this classroom exchange, was the student who initially gave up on solving the problem as suggested - by using the get info tool - and opted to search using Wikipedia. Lisbeth didn't share this information with her peers and I suspect that Wikipedia wouldn't have provided the answers she sought. Through enacting individualism she was agentive in her learning and exhibited the I-for-myself identity. 

In my classroom I'm a believer in the constructivist approach and much of our explorations surround developing what Alexander would call community human relations, yet at which point do students' I-for-myself identities shift* to I-for-others or others-for-me? Before delving into sharing her solution using Wikipedia, was Lisbeth experimenting to see if it would meet the needs of her peers? At which point did she decide to abandon it and become part of the community deconstructing code? The answers to these questions were lost in this lesson, but provide interesting things to watch out for in future exchanges.  

To conclude, I want to return to the students in the class. Their willingness to solve these minor technical issues in whichever ways they thought appropriate - Some students only asked the people sitting next to them and when advised to venture further afield to the other side of the classroom, showed surprise that others may possess different solutions! - and the atmosphere of empowerment in the classroom illustrated something more tacit. Their determination indicated a curiosity in the content. Solving these technical issues allowed them to get back to the interesting tasks at hand illustrating that Earth Science is more than 'boring old rocks!'**

* I've avoided using terms like evolve as there exists the assumption that change is for the better. Our identities don't remain static and identity shifts can have positive and negative effects for us and others around us.

** Not my thoughts although I've heard this in a number of exchanges with teachers and students! 

Tutoring a MOOC? What's that like?

Something interesting happened this week! Upon waking up and peeking my head out of the covers to another cold and rainy Melbourne morning, I did the usual thing: Found my phone, tucked my head beneath the blankets and began trawling through social media and email updates. Being connected means living and working within different times zones. My supervisor is overseas and I have colleagues in America... when Australia sleeps the rest of my network is awake and communicating.

So, on this morning I woke up to an email asking me to tutor a MOOC. If you're a reader of this blog, you'll have heard about Planet Earth... and You! organised by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign through Coursera. I've been writing about my online learning journey which started off as a way to learn about the context in which I'm doing my PhD study. I'm interested in students' use of digital technologies in Earth Science, specifically Geology. Not knowing much about Geology and working full time, there was no way that I could audit a first year course in daylight hours. So I turned to the MOOC.

Just recently I've read Audrey Watters' The Monsters of Education Technology. Watters is critical of MOOCs, and I agree with many of her assertions. In discussing learning on the web, she brings up an interesting point that I'd like to explore here and connect with my recent invitation:

Learning on the Web means the intellectual relationship isn't restricted to student and content. The relationship isn't only among student, content and instructor. The exchange isn't about a student demonstrating to an instructor that content has been "successfully delivered" and processed. Learning on the Web opens that intellectual exchange up in new ways. Authority, expertise, participation, voice - these can be so different on the programmable web; not so with programmed instruction. (p. 104)

What is programmed instruction? Here's a video of B.F. Skinner who coined the phrase. He's explaining his teaching machines.

If we think about MOOCs in terms of programmed instruction, I think that we're denying the learner a sense of agency he or she can assert in the online learning environment. What does it mean to be a learner in the online environment and what identities do we bring to this environment that are distinct from those that might be exposed inside the walls of a classroom? How do our identities change as we engage - or disengage - with the content and the lived experience of the MOOC?

I don't think that presenting a lecture as a video and getting students to watch it on the tram as they travel to and from school will solve their problems. What I'm thinking about is the tacit learning that can happen that may not be primary intention for taking a MOOC. Over the course of 7 months, I've completed 2 and have just started a third. I set out to learn about Geology, but from the posts here and conversations with peers, I've learned more than content.

For the most part, I've reflected on what it means to be a learner in the MOOC environment and the affordances MOOCs offer the teacher as learner. I don't have the time or the space to go into all this here, but I want to go back to the Watters quote above in which online learning can open the exchange in new ways. I've had the experience of being a teacher and university lecturer/tutor what intrigued me about the email was that I had never done these things online. What does it mean to tutor online? How will this be different from my past experiences? And will there be unique affordances in this endeavour?

It was with these questions that I submitted my application to become a tutor in Planet Earth... and You! If all goes well, you can expect more of this journey in this space and if you've gotten this far in the post, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Harnessing Technology to Promote Growth

A couple of months ago, this started happening:

The numbness began in cold weather. At first, only 1 or 2 fingers were affected. Then it began happening more often and, at times, 4 fingers on one hand were as white as a ghost. Naturally, I posted it on Facebook and asked if any of my other 30-something friends had similar experiences.

Within an hour, a paediatric cardiologist in Taiwan had diagnosed it as something called Raynaud's phenomenon. A high school friend from Canada said she has it and offered her doctor's advice. Of course, I turned to Google to find out what I could and quickly forgot about it until the next time it happened.

My mum, also a Facebook friend, didn't forget about it. In her imagination, with the help of ill informed Google searches, the numbness was caused by something malignant... tiny chemical machines hijacking my circulatory system to do something more sinister in other parts of my body.

Slightly disturbed and mostly to get my mum to stop nagging me - Internet: a nagging enabler for mothers half way around the world - I went to the doctor. To make a long story short, I explained what was happening and what I thought it was. He agreed and when I asked him what I could do, he turned to the computer and Googled it. Here was the advice I received and my thoughts left unvoiced:

1. Get a warm pair of gloves. Thank you, Captain Obvious!
2. When you go home, Google Raynaud's phenomenon. Pick the first site from the list, that'll be the Mayo Clinic, and read about it. Actually, I already did that... AND NO, the Mayo Clinic probably won't be the first website that comes up. 

Why am I writing about a personal health issue on my Ed Tech blog? Haven't we all used the Internet to self diagnose or prepare us for a visit to the doctor or dentist? With Google regularly playing a part in our lives and in our students' homework regimes I feel it's important to think about teaching students to harness technology to promote growth.

Dewey (1938) writes about growth in Experience and Education. Growth can take different directions and not only develops us physically but intellectually and morally. Here, I'm going to focus on intellectual development. For Dewey, there are 3 types of experiences: educational, noneducational and miseducational. Eisner (2002, p.37) summarises these:

• Educational experiences increase ability to secure meaning and to act in ways that are instrumental to the achievement of inherently worthwhile ends

• Noneducational experiences are simply undergone and have no significant effect on the individual one way or another

• Miseducational experiences thwart or hamper our ability to have further experiences or to cope intelligently with problems                                                                  

If every experience influences in some degree the objective conditions under which further experiences are had' (Dewey, 1938, p. 37), I wonder what this means for the experiences students' have when using search engines to find information related to their school work, curiosities or problems.

Take, for example, the situation described above. Using Facebook to reach my network of professional friends I had an educational experience. My more knowledgable friends helped me understand what might be going on. My life experience working in a chemistry lab and being acquainted with the Mayo Clinic added to the educational experience while I was sifting through the sites Google brought to my attention. This history allowed me to navigate the web as someone who could be agentive in discussing my health concerns and developing a strategy to address the condition with the doctor. Had he been more adept at his job and I more vocal a more successful outcome would've resulted. Needless to say, I'm getting a second opinion.

That's my story and it was shaped by my 30-plus years and unique experiences. What if a high school student had a similar query? Sure, high school students aren't new to using search engines, but what kind of experiences do search engines lend them when they're told just Google it? When students aren't taught how to effectively use search engines or how the algorithms work to filter information that may or may not be personally relevant, the experiences they have can range from educational to miseducational. 

What if that young person didn't have the ability to navigate the networked public of the Internet like an informed, technologically savvy adult? What if that young person didn't have the support network of a concerned parent or guardian to follow up? The experiences young people have in schooling should be those that set them up for future educational experiences so they can make informed decisions. Watters (2014) says '... more often than not, we still lasso technology for the more traditional purposes and practices of education: for content delivery' (p. 99). With this in mind it is time for a reconceptualisation of the content that we're 'delivering.'

Vygotsky and MOOCs

Last week I was chatting with a colleague, Edwin, who was finishing an intense MOOC in Bioscience. Edwin is trained in IT and a veteran MOOC student who enrols in a variety of courses out of interest. We often have conversations surrounding students' use of ICT, including our own experiences. The conversations from last week became the inspiration for this post.

Over the 8-9 weeks Edwin was enrolled in Boiscience we discussed a number of questions about people's motivations to take MOOCs. Boiscience seemed like a university subject with journal articles to read, practical work to be completed, exams and formal reports to be written. 'Is this course part of a degree?' I asked. It seemed more full on than the MOOCs I had already taken.

Edwin is always an active participant. He trawls the discussion forums and tries to add to his classmates' experiences. When submitting a draft of an experimental report for feedback the tutor penalised him for not citing secondary sources properly. While perusing the discussion forum another classmate asked what citing in proper format entailed. Edwin reached out and tried to direct the sixty-something grandmother, Alice, to the citation guide provided. On the last day to submit, late at night Alice was still seeking help in this area. With a subject as intense as this, where was the tutor? Out of thousands of people taking the course, why didn't anyone else help out? What is the significance of Alice reaching out?

Vygotsky's Mind in Society (1978) begins with 3 questions the work attempts to analyse. In this post I'd like to unpack his 3rd question and apply my understanding of Vygotsky* to Alice's situation:

     What is the nature of the relationship between the use of tools and the development of speech?

Here, the use of tools refers to Alice's use of the MOOC platform. In this context speech is not verbal but written. I am concerned with the social interactions between Alice and Edwin and practical activity. Vygotsky says that the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development is when speech and practical activity converge (p. 24). Furthermore 'speech not only accompanies practical activity but also plays a specific role in carrying it out' (p. 25). In this sense, speech is agentive in that it enables the participant to act and to do so with varying levels of autonomy.

In this first chapter, Vygotsky writes about children, but I'm not suggesting that Alice and Edwin's interaction is childlike. Perhaps a better word to describe Alice might be 'novice' - she is new to MOOCs and is learning how to be in them. Edwin is the 'expert.' Vygotsky describes speech/act patterns:

• initially speech, used to address an adult [expert], follows actions; and
• at a later stage the child [novice] uses speech to plan for action (p. 28)

Relating to the former, Alice has probably tried to understand what proper citations look like. She has accessed and read the tutor's report. Perhaps, she has looked at other discussion forums to see if there were any threads related to her issue. Yet, at this stage she seeks the help of an expert.

On the surface, the purpose of Edwin's conversation with Alice seems obvious, to help her find the structure for correct citations. But at a deeper level, Edwin was acting to scaffold Alice's future use of the MOOC platform, one in which real time social speech is absent. 'Last time, I had to .... so that I could ...' is the kind of egocentric speech that any instructor seeking to develop students' application skills would hope to inspire.

What does this mean for MOOCs and the students who use them? In my work, social constructivist in its approach, I'm constantly playing a tug of war asking myself which is more important: students learning the tech or students learning the subject? Not all tech is created equally and sometimes learning the tech will provide students with the skills to assert their own agency to learn the subject material.

In our last conversation, Edwin shared Alice's final plea. Ten minutes before the assignment was due, 11:50pm, Alice confessed that she still hadn't found how to correctly cite her sources and may as well just hand in her assignment. If we didn't know anything about Alice, it would be easy to chide her for not finding the citation guide on the platform or 'just Googling it.' What's sad about this case is that for someone trying to be a part of a wider community of learners that community failed to address to her needs: communication in the form of non-verbal speech to direct her to successfully cite her sources and scaffold her for future successful learning experiences.

It would also be easy to label Alice as an older person who just doesn't get the technology, but research shows that younger people who've grown up in the digital age also need to be scaffolded to use technology in formal educational environments. When I was in Boston I learned about a school that gave extra credit to students who successfully completed MOOCs. I wonder how these students have faired in these communities.

With the pressure of MOOC platforms to produce profit, one has to wonder that if some students are isolated in introductory courses, how to they expect enrolments in fee paying students to rise?


*It should be noted that I'm a novice Vygotskian 'scholar' and any feedback would be much appreciated if you happen upon this post.

Exploring EdTech @ the Melbourne Museum

Today 3 teachers and I took 75 Year 9 girls to the Melbourne Museum to explore Earth Science including the Earth's structure and early life. In addition, a colleague from the university who is interested in use of alternative educational spaces came along to see what we did. We visited 3 exhibitions: Dynamic Earth, Dinosaur Walk and 600 Million Years Victoria Evolves.

In this blog post, I'd like to comment on some observations I made while the students were exploring the exhibitions and using different technologies. I'm going to focus on 3 areas of discussion:

• Rio Tinto Cinema Volcanic 3D Movie
• Use of interactive screens
• Students' use of their own technology

It should be mentioned that there are many interactive digital technologies in these exhibits and that students were given activity books designed by me to guide them through their exploration. Given my interest in EdTech I tried to pay special attention to students' use and perceptions of the technology as they engaged with topics addressed in Year 8 and those that would be visited in Year 9. I won't address students' perceptions in this post, as this is a topic for later. 

Rio Tinto Cinema Volcanic 3D Movie

The 360 degree screen shows how Earth came into being from the Big Bang to the formation of the Hawaiian Islands. Students are taken from the tops of mountains to the bottom of the ocean. Images of formations resulting from tectonic plate movement are highlighted. 

Although the students were encouraged to explore Dynamic Earth in no particular order, it was interesting that the whole class seemed to come together at the same time to watch the movie. My Year 9s waited patiently for a class of primary students to leave the theatre before entering. As the movie was shown, I was delighted to hear squeals of excitement and comments of wonderment which illustrated a collective thinking in the act of watching. 

What's that? Is it the Moon? The Sun? That's Earth, it's [showing] the Big Bang! [Referring to a pyroclastic flow] It doesn't look like it's travelling that fast... Woah, it is! Hey, we've seen those minerals! Do animals like that really exist at the bottom of the ocean? How long did it take for the islands to form?

This made me think of the brain activity when watching TV versus sleeping. What would the brain activity look like while students engage in this way?

Use if Interactive Screens

Throughout the day, there were several interactive screens that students could engage with:

• A map showing where meteorites had struck the Earth at different locations, students could press on a location and learn about the meteorite and crater formed
•  Creatures of Victoria's geological past were illustrated and could be manipulated using a touch screen to gain an understanding of the anatomical structure
• A map showing places of interest where Victoria had undergone significant changes was projected onto a topographic map. Students could touch an area of interest to have information - photographs and text - overlay the map

It was interesting to watch the students engage with these technologies. The students at this school generally play along when the content is interesting and the tech easy to use. At some points I found myself using the grandmother approach (Sugata Mitra) to scaffold them when things didn't work quite like their phone or tablet technologies. 

For me, the most interesting thing coming from these interactives were the conversations as many of them only required the user to press a button and read. 

This animal has a beak like a...? Bird, octopus... 

What do the points on the map mean? Just places where meteorites landed. 

Why is that interesting? It's not... 

Students took more away from some interactives than others and I wondered whether there was competition between digital technologies within the exhibits. For example, the meteorite screen was almost opposite to the 3D movie and near an area where students'  weight in gold could be calculated. Students seemed to find these particularly engaging and probably more so than the touch screen.  

Students' Use of their own Technology

By the end of the day, the students were exhausted and, to be honest, so was I. I felt this way when I came to the museum last Sunday to design the activities for them to complete. My final stop was the 600 Million Years Victoria Evolves exhibition. I wanted to include this for students to have an idea of what Victoria's geological past would've been like. I settled on having the students explore 1 creature they found interesting. They needed to learn about the structural features enabling it to survive in the prehistoric environment. As a bit of fun, I asked that they take a photo of the fossil and a selfie with the model of what the organism would have looked like. 

To be honest, I was so exhausted that I totally forgot I had asked them do this. When I saw a student taking a selfie, I asked her why she was doing that! She said: Miss you asked us to! After a giggle, what was interesting was that the student confessed that she was enjoying taking the selfie! I have no idea why I asked them to take it in the first place other than perhaps to acknowledge a common practice that has evolved with the use of mobile technologies. What does it mean to youth to take nerdy selfies and does this alter their identities in any way? It would be interesting to see where these selfies end up whether they become part of their so-called personal brand or archived in a folder on their phones. Unpacking our trip to the museum might yield student feedback that's interesting in this regard. 

If you got this far, thanks for reading this musing! Any thoughts would be welcome!

Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Mind with a MOOC

This week I had a few things I could write about, but thought I'd share a little more about MOOCs from the point of view of a student/educator/researcher. I began studying Dynamic Earth offered by coursera.org about 2 weeks ago and am learning that not all MOOCs are created equally.

This one is offered by the American Museum of Natural History in New York and advertises as a course for educators. Compared to University of Illinois' Planet Earth... And You! it's a lot lighter on the time commitment needed to watch videos. I assume this is part of the appeal for educators. It's Term 2 in Australia and Term 4 in America - both very busy times in the school year.

The topics so far have been about Geologic Time and Earth's Early Atmosphere. I'm constantly struck by questions which, coming from a chemistry background, I'm surprised that I've never thought to consider. For example, when was oxygen created? And what caused it to build up in Earth's atmosphere? I knew what banded iron formations were, but had no idea they could be used as evidence that early Earth had no oxygen in its atmosphere... In fact, that seemed contradictory!

Not being particularly experienced in Earth Science, hence one of the reasons to take the course, the language is new to me. The facilitators mention Archean and Proterozoic Eons which have no meaning for someone interested in industrial chemistry - a long time for a reaction might be several hours. I find myself trawling Google to work out just how long ago these eons occurred. This isn't a criticism for the course, in fact, as an adult I feel a great sense of success when I can work it out. Let's teach our students about struggling to succeed.

The course facilitators not only provide interesting material about Earth Science but also link it to the American Next Generation Science Standards, giving me a professional learning opportunity which speaks to pedagogy. I find myself considering the Science strands for the National Curriculum in Australia while learning more about the American system. Of particular interest are 2 points from the 8 important practices for students outlined in these standards:

• Engaging in argument from evidence
• Using mathematics and computational thinking

I don't think it's a stretch to say that expert teachers agree these practices are essential, but from my experience, these 2 points are often tacit and perhaps not brought to the forefront when engaging students in Science. 

When visiting any Science class, there is always the student who occasionally laments 'Why are we doing Math now?' Let's pause and have a discussion about mathematics being the grammar of the language of Science. Similarly, you might hear students query about why we are taking measurements and others' responding 'To make a graph!' But, what do those graphs and other forms of data organisation tell us? How are we able to better contribute to society when we can form arguments from evidence? These are the conversations that need to happen in Science classrooms.

Finally, as a researcher, I find myself wondering what the best way is to pitch geological concepts. I've been reading a PhD thesis completed in 2010 in which different forms of thinking about Geoscience are highlighted in the lit review. On the one hand, there is a school of thought that believes a focus on the physical aspects are the most important. For example, rocks and minerals, plate tectonics and the structure of the Earth. On the other hand there is Earth Systems Science, of importance is understanding the interlinked processes related to Earth and surrounding atmosphere. Planet Earth...And You! fell into the former category whereas Dynamic Earth addresses the latter. Although learning about systems apparently requires cognitive stretches beyond those of studying physical structures, I find myself at a cross roads to deciding which I would rather study as part of my own research...

In conclusion, and a weak one at that - it is very late, it seems that although not all MOOCs are created equally, there is still much for the engaged student to think about.

Focusing Students' Research: Tips for Using Search Engines

This week, I want to offer a quick tip that came out of a surprising conversation I had with a student. My Year 9s were searching for information related to human body systems, some were daunted by the level of depth to go into. I'm sure that if you're teacher and reading this you may have come across parts of research projects where the language students use seems to indicate that they've been sitting in on university lectures!

For these students, I asked them to do their research using the Internet - no online library searches, either! The reason for this came about because search engines like Google, Safari and Firefox are generally students' first port of call when doing homework online. Research literature by Crook, among others, and my own experiences told me that students' skills in this area need to be developed.

The screenshots below show typical search results my students obtained when they typed search terms related to the project rubric.

Figure I: "Lymphocytes" - Students needed to report some of the specialised cells in their system

Figure II: "Specialized cells in the lymphatic system" 

Figure III: "What are liver cells?"

Notice the red squares? Apart from finding these links frustrating to read, the information can possibly have effects on students' self efficacy in Science. Articles that are cited by... refer to academic journals. Although students' search terms seem adequate for them, perhaps based on project rubrics or handouts from the teacher, if not taught to interpret the results of their searches critically, they are faced with information presented in a language that is beyond their grasp. How can I do well in Science, I don't understand the words used?

Here are 3 tips for getting students to think critically when doing web searches:

1) Use the students' original search terms, but add for kids or some other variation after. The students' prior research and scientific terms they have found is still valued and more accessible information is yielded.

Figure IV: "Lymphocytes for kids"

2) Look at the domain name in the web address, this is the end of the address (.org, .gov, .edu are some examples of domain names). You might have some discussion about what these stand for and whether the information can be trusted or not.

3) Don't discourage students from going further in their study if something that is interesting, but teach them a little about the nature of knowledge presented on the Internet. For my students, I projected some of their search results on the board. We talked about what cited by means and when using these links would or wouldn't be appropriate.

These tips are just 3 that were inspired by a conversation this week. I would love to hear more about other tips readers recommend for research projects. Please feel free to comment.

Thinking about MOOCs

If you are new to reading this blog, I am writing it to help me with my thoughts for a PhD study on students' perceptions of their use of technology in formal education. I am also working while doing the PhD so it is a little difficult to be engaged in the university setting during the day.

About a month ago I took my first MOOC - massive open online course - offered by coursera.org. I decided to take Planet Earth... And You! It was offered by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign coincidentally where one of my favourite qualitative research writers, Robert Stake, is also based. At the start of the course there were 28,000 people enrolled and I was excited by the different forms of engagement the online environment would offer. These included:

• Video lectures
• Quizzes
• Assignments
• Practical Activities
• Discussion Boards
• Student-to-student Assessment

I have to admit I enrolled for 2 reasons. Firstly, although I am a trained Science teacher, my knowledge in the field of Geology isn't a strength. I grew up in Ontario and despite having an excellent reputation for secondary education I can't remember much about my lessons in Geology. Unlike Biology, Chemistry and Physics, Geology wasn't offered at the senior high school level when I went to school and to be honest, I'm not sure that I would've taken it! The second reason follows the first, as a Science teacher in Australia, I am expected to deliver lessons in Geology! So, I signed up and logged in. 

The research on MOOCs suggests that perhaps only 1 in 10 students will complete their online course. For me, these numbers encouraged me to stick with it and try to learn how I might employ some of the online engagement strategies to my very real classroom. I won't focus on video lessons, you can see heaps of these by other educators on YouTube. I even have a daggy channel, too. 

I took away some lessons from Planet Earth that I would like to share with you:

1. Practical Activities
2. Discussion Boards
3. Student-to-student Assessment

Practical Activities: The course took us all over the world to study earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics and resources. As a teacher passionate about the regular use of pracs, I wondered how this would work online. We were provided with Google Earth files and data to take us to interesting formations on the Earth's surface. There, we took measurements, made observations, and used the data to make conclusions about what happened and will happen to these places over time. This was the part of the course that I liked the best! I was sceptical at first, but it opened my understanding to how Geology can be made very real by utilising a free software to travel virtually while employing the scientific method to complete the pracs. 

There are many programs that offer virtual experiments, but I think that as teachers we need to ask ourselves whether these are just a replacement for getting the equipment out and having students actually do the experiments. The Planet Earth staff designed the practical work in such a way that the technology was used to enhance our understanding and furthered our knowledge in an environment that would otherwise be inaccessible to learners. I have heard teachers lament that the only prac we can do in Geology is the Mohs scratch test... Not anymore! 

Discussion Boards: The 5 week course had a weekly discussion board that students needed to contribute to. I'll admit, I didn't really have the time to spend the allocated 2 hours on these, but that's not to say that I didn't learn anything from them. I participated every week, but what I needed to do as a learner was to participate earlier so that my posts could have been read and responded to. The discussions focused around debate style questions such as whether we should continue to use fossil fuels as usual or whether we would advise people living around a volcano to evacuate or not. I found that these types of questions allowed the learner to position themselves in the topic by providing them  a forum to showcase what they had learned but also to assume the role of a stakeholder. Learners had the opportunity to respond creatively to these prompts and my observations showed that many did!

I see potential for these types of discussions to happen in and outside my classroom online. By using something private like a GoogleDoc to do this, my students could make similar contributions to our collective knowledge or perhaps begin a project to structure discussion for debate preparation that would be enacted during class. 

Student-to-student Assessment: While taking Planet Earth, I was surprised that we were called on to grade the discussion posts from our peers. For 2 weeks, we needed to grade the work of 5 peers and ourselves. We were provided with a rubric and could choose to make comments on others' work. For the first week, I had heaps of marking for my own job. I graded the work, but didn't offer any comments... I admit when I received my peer graded work, I felt excited to see comments of encouragement and constructive criticism. I also felt a little guilty that I hadn't spent the time to encourage my peers in the same way! The next week, I spent more time on my peers' work and felt another sense of satisfaction by hopefully giving my peers the same encouragement. 

In the end, I not only learned heaps about Geology, I also learned about some interesting pedagogical approaches that I will build on in the future. I still feel a little apprehensive about teaching Geology, but I have come to appreciate that learning together is very powerful. This is something that I try to encourage my students to do... Funny how practicing what you preach is a little confronting.

Always looking for something to procrastinate with, I have signed up for another MOOC offered by courser.org: The Dynamic Earth: A Course for Educators. I'm looking forward to starting on Monday! 

Getting Started

So, three months into my PhD and I think I need to find another way to procrastinate...well sort of. Let me tell you part of my story...

I became interested in the use of technology when I was studying for my Master of Teaching. We had to take a short subject in digital technologies to finish our degree. We learned things like how to use PowerPoint and make stop animation videos. These programs weren’t complicated and some students complained about already knowing how to use PowerPoint. What I really enjoyed about this subject was how we learned to use these programs in different ways. PowerPoint could be used to make an interactive game and my own photos became a movie. I was also struck when the lecturer recommended a video illustrating Sugata Mitra’s work. I couldn’t believe how a shared computer could lead to children learning so much when faced with a difficult challenge - working the computer in a language they didn't understand.

Fast forward to 6 years of teaching secondary school in Australia. I have actively tried to keep up my interest by playing around and trying to structure project work for students that allows them to be exposed to and present with different technologies. I am amazed at the work many of them produce. Today I watched as some students used Powtoon to create an animation about a body system they’re studying. I love having conversations with students about their use of technologies and enjoy learning about their interests and struggles with technology in school.

I became increasingly interested in the potential agency that students can develop while using digital technologies for their learning. This might be researching with the Internet, creating a tool for their learning and thinking, reorganizing what they have learned into a presentation or logging in to learn from/with their peers. In a small study for my research certification I was struck by the identities students adopted when using Edmodo and GoogleDocs in the class. Interestingly, students seemed to be passive users of the technology. They identified an I-for-others identity (Bakhtin), I hope what I post is of use to other people, but they didn’t see their posts or others’ posts as beneficial to their own learning. Some students said that we weren’t using the technology in a different way because they were expected to use it and post their work on Edmodo or in the GoogleDoc.

Since that time, my teaching practice has evolved but I keep coming back to the idea of learning with others. I am interested in developing students’ research skills so that their ideas of the ‘other’ can expand to encompass the wider community of teachers and learners beyond the classroom. Our school has a bring your own device (BYOD) program and the students have the autonomy to choose which device to bring. This and my own desire to become proficient across a number of devices has spurred more experimentation that yields interesting opportunities in the classroom.

My students are working on creating videos to explain a body system. First they need to do some research. While doing this, I am excited to help them develop their skills to use key words to seek out and find appropriate materials. We work together to critically evaluate information found by sharing on Edmodo. “Did you know about the export as a PDF function you can use on your Mac?” I ask the class. The students haven’t seen this before and I am amazed by responses like “that’s so cool” when I show them how they might use this feature. “There’s got to be a similar function for other devices, we just need to work it out,” they are advised. In addition, the students need to create a Harvard style bibliography for the project and one has found and shared a site that allows them to easily create the list much like my use of Endnote for my own studies.

I began this initial post as an exercise to help me focus my research question for my PhD study. It’s coming along, but Maxwell (2013) advised students to think about personal, practical and intellectual goals. I think my personal goals for studying students’ use of technologies as part of formal education stems from wanting to understand their potential agency – the power to act autonomously – in personal meaning making. If by slim chance you are reading this, I would love to hear some of your thoughts.