Task Overview

This assessment task will be completed in your online blog. It comprises Part A: a series of weekly reflection tasks, and culminates in Part B: the submission of a Reflective Synopsis Presentation.

Part A: Weekly Embedded Tasks – Blog Reflections 1-3 – 30%

Each week of weeks 3, 4 and 5 you will publish a blog posting (Reflections 1-3) in response to an embedded activity and task to address three different digital tools (one from each week). These are outlined in the Moodle unit materials. Each posting will equate to a possible 10 marks at the time of final grading (a total of 30 marks out of 50, or 60% of your overall grade for Assessment Task 1).

Late submission of these embedded tasks will not be permitted except by arrangement with your tutor. Systematic and regular blog postings and participation in unit activities are essential. You are required to comment on the posts of at least 2 peers. The purpose of commenting is to make a timely contribution to the learning of others. Late commenting or posting of your own reflections, beyond the timeframe of each activity, will limit your capacity to demonstrate the professional networking requirement of the task. Improvements can be made to your posts following formative peer feedback and discussion, up until the final AT1 due date.

You must use one of the provided Models of Effective Feedback to guide your comments. The Reflective Synopsis (Part B of Assessment Task 1) is a culminating reflection on your professional learning about digital pedagogy.

References are required on each blog post.

Part B: Reflective Synopsis – Pecha Kucha 20%

Pecha Kucha ("chit chat" in Japanese) – a 20x20 presentation format showing 20 chosen images, each for 20 seconds. In other words, you've got 400 seconds to tell your story, with voice supported by visuals to guide the way.

Your reflective synopsis, to be presented as a Pecha Kucha:

• draws together the key ideas and conclusions emerging from your reflections including the embedded assessment tasks, as well as your responses to the stimulus questions from Weeks 1 and 2;
• provides an overview of the learning process and what you have learned. It then proceeds to draw upon your experiences by identifying how your beliefs, knowledge and skills (both technical and pedagogical) have grown or been developed. In this process, you should support your claims through reference to the readings (or other sources presented in the unit) and to your own experience. In this way, you will link the impact and intent of engagement with the resources and activities of this course on your beliefs, knowledge and skills with regard to digital pedagogy and e-learning;
• will present a summarised conclusion to identify how your learning will support future learning;
• will also include an evaluation of professional learning, with justified examples of how online interaction with others (providing and responding to feedback in through blog posting comments), has enhanced your professional growth and understanding of online professional learning as a teacher. Evidence can be provided through links to blog posts and comments, or through the insertion of screen captures.

The Pecha Kucha format is important. It is there to ensure that you are:

• concise and relevant in the reflection on and evaluation of your learning;
• knowledgable in your planning of an academically rigorous discourse;
• able to present a coherent case. You must adhere to the provided template format.

Details

• WORD COUNTS Embedded Tasks 1-3 500-700 words each + images and references; Pecha Kucha (spoken) 900-1200 words + references... 20 slides + title and reference page/s
• DUE DATES Formative Reflection Tasks 1-3 (29/3, 6/4, 11/4) + timely peer feedback throughout; Reflective Synopsis – Pecha Kucha (22/4)
• A Pecha Kucha transcript, with referencing, must be uploaded onto Moodle for a TurnItIn check.

Further details of these tasks together with the marking criteria are embedded in the Moodle Assessment Portal. Weekly Moodle materials provide additional support.

• Propose learning strategies that are inclusive and learner-centred.
• Participate in and contribute to the development of a professional online learning community.
• Develop and evaluate strategies to differentiate learning in ICT-rich learning environments to meet individual learning needs.
• Design and create learning plans in which learner engagement is transformed by the use of ICT.
• Model and support safe, legal and ethical practice.

Task Overview

When you plan a sequence of learning experiences, it should always be founded upon the nature of the content, the learning outcomes, and your values and beliefs about effective classroom pedagogy and learning.

This task is designed to make explicit to the reader your decision-making process and thinking as you work towards the engagement of your learners in a short sequence of lessons in your classroom. The designed learning sequence should meet the descriptors of learning at the modification and redefinition levels of SAMR as has been expanded upon in Assessment 1, Reflective Synopsis. It should demonstrate high-end digital pedagogy, and complex, problematic, authentic learning.

• The learning sequence will be drawn from an idea/site/resource that you have discovered online. The assessment task uses digital curation as a collaborative process through which you will share, and possibly find your selected resource.
• As part of the process of finding and selecting resources, you will create and share, and engage with others through the creation of a digital curated collection of artifacts in a Padlet (or equivalent). As with Assessment 1, this task is built upon timely and active participation in the unit and its activities.
• As a group, you are interdependent, and you will demonstrate and evidence this professional engagement through interchanges in your curated digital collections of teaching ideas. This interchange will inform a final reflection on your professional engagement as it is aligned with AITSL Graduate Standards 6.2 and 7.4.
• Your decision-making processes will be scaffolded through a series of tasks, embedded in the Moodle materials. Each of the tasks will result in the creation of a portfolio artifact which will be uploaded and stored in your website portfolio. Together, these artifacts will justify your decisions as you plan your learning series and will act together as a collection of items that are presented in your portfolio to demonstrate your insight.
• Your portfolio will culminate in a learning narrative, which is written from the perspective of a learner in your classroom. It is the story of the key events experienced by your learner as they proceed through the learning sequence. It will evidence the actioning of the plans that you have drawn together.

Your portfolio will be presented as a website (Google Sites/Wix/Weebly/Wordpress), however, it is anticipated that it will likely include artifacts (linked and embedded) that may be presented on other online sites.

The total length of this task is anticipated to be the equivalent of 3000 words. 

Task Details

The portfolio artifacts are created regularly throughout Weeks 6 – 12. Details and models will be presented in the Moodle materials each week.

The portfolio must include the following, in the form of your choice:

• A pedagogy ‘map’ that integrates digital pedagogy with the Australian Curriculum: General Capabilities for your discipline area.
• A link to a curated collection of digital resources, in which a single resource/artifact is selected to underpin the design of a learning sequence that maximises the potential of digital pedagogy. If you are combining more than one element, identify both/all of them.
• A link to your curator’s insight which is attached to a selected single resource/artifact (or your nominated collection) in your curated collection that shares your insight into the value of the artifact(s) to support transformative learning design, and how it will be used in your classroom context.
• The development of a learning sequence (mini-unit), based on this selected resource/artifact. The planning should reflect the pedagogy identified in your pedagogy ‘map’, as well as the use of digital technologies to transform learning as identified in your ICT alignment plan.
• A brief profile of a representative student in your class, including their learning needs. A narrative, written from the perspective of the student (written in first person), showing how your students will “live” the digital pedagogy that you have identified in your pedagogy and ICT alignment map.

As in Assessment task 1, these artifacts are regarded as documentation of your learning from Weeks 6 through 12, and it is not intended that they are only created for assessment purposes. Thus, it is anticipated that they are generated progressively through the term in response to the unit materials and activities.

Further details are available in the Key Unit Information in the unit Moodle Home Page.

• Propose learning strategies that are inclusive and learner-centred.
• Participate in and contribute to the development of a professional online learning community.
• Develop and evaluate strategies to differentiate learning in ICT-rich learning environments to meet individual learning needs.
• Design and create learning plans in which learner engagement is transformed by the use of ICT.
• Model and support safe, legal and ethical practice