DOCUMENTING AND REFLECTING ON YOUR RESEARCH

This assessment task will be completed in your Moodle blog in response to your exploration of newly discovered digital tools that could transform learning and teaching in your classroom. References to key literature are required in each of your blog posts 2-5.

Blog Post 1

Write an introductory post that discusses your position as a digital pedagogue, your beliefs about digital learning and teaching, and your mindset as you navigate this unit.

Blog Post 2 (due 22/3)

Research the SAMR model and its possible application in your classroom. Use your developing knowledge of this framework to identify examples of how technology might be used in your classroom at each level of the model. You should ensure that your suggestions support not only lower-order but also higher-order thinking in your students.

Blog Posts 3 (due 29/3) and 4 (due 5/4) 

You are to select, experiment with, and evaluate the potential use of TWO (2) different digital tools that could be used innovatively in your classroom. Apply your findings to draw together what you have learned about each tool, writing a focused reflection that outlines your exploration of the functionality and potential for transformational digital pedagogy. In doing so, you are to provide an overview of the technical aspects of each of the chosen tools.

• What can the tool offer for education in terms of technical aspects?
• What do the tools that you have explored allow you and your students to do?
• Can you multi-author? Do you have privacy settings?
• Can you customise outcomes?
• What other technical considerations are important? Is it easy to use?
• What experience is needed to operate it? What are the implications for your own professional learning?
• Can it be shared? How?

Include significant evidence of your exploration using methods that are related to the classroom. It is expected that sufficient evidence is provided to support your claim of technical skill (such as a range of uploaded images, video or other files, links to external content, etc.).

Suggest how this tool could be used to transform learning through the redesign of a traditional task using the SAMR framework.

Blog Post 5 (due 8/4)

Research and identify the legal, safe and ethical protocols that should be considered when your own students are working with these technologies. What key aspects should you consider of each tool? With reference to literature, identify the pedagogical benefits of working with tools such as these. Focus not only on your own use but more importantly your students’ use of ICT for learning. Consider your students creating with this technology, rather than being mere consumers.

Blog Post 6 (due 12/4)

Provide a culminating reflection on your professional learning about digital learning and teaching by:

• addressing the impact and intent of engagement with the resources and activities of this unit on your beliefs, knowledge and skills with regard to digital pedagogy and eLearning, and how you can use ICTs to engage students in their learning (APST 3.4), as well as implement teaching strategies for using ICT to expand curriculum learning opportunities for students (APST 2.6).
• identifying how your learning in this unit has supported your understanding of the relevant issues and the strategies available to support the safe, responsible and ethical use of ICT in learning and teaching (APST 4.5):
• how your learning will support future learning;
• evaluating your professional learning, with justified examples of how online interaction with others (providing and responding to feedback through blog comments), has enhanced/could enhance your professional growth and understanding of online professional learning as a teacher.

PEER FEEDBACK (timely alignment with progressive due dates – Posts 3, 4 and 5)

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 but also to learn from the diverse exploration and reflection that has occurred. Late commenting or posting of your own reflections, beyond the time frame of each activity, will limit your capacity to demonstrate the professional networking requirement of this 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 Peer Feedback to guide your comments.

Evidence can be provided through links to other blog posts and comments, or through the insertion of screen captures. Late submission of these tasks will not be permitted except by arrangement with the Unit Coordinator. Systematic and regular blog postings and participation in course activities are essential.

• 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 and materials in which learner engagement is transformed by the use of ICT.
• Model and support safe, legal, and ethical practice.

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, and how you will implement teaching strategies for using ICT to expand curriculum learning opportunities for students (APST 2.6). The designed learning sequence should meet the descriptors of learning at the modification and redefinition levels of SAMR as expanded upon in Assessment 1. Your work 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 in your growing collection of resources (Padlet). The assessment task uses digital curation as a collaborative process through which you will share, and locate your selected resource.
• As part of the process of finding and selecting resources, you will create, share, and engage with others through the creation of a digital, curated collection of artefacts in a Padlet site. 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 artefact which will be uploaded and stored in your Moodle portfolio. Together, these artefacts 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 work will be presented as a Moodle Portfolio, however, it is anticipated that it will likely include artefacts (linked and embedded) that may be presented on other online sites.

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

Task Details

The portfolio artefacts are created regularly throughout Weeks 6 – 10. Details and models will be presented in Moodle materials each week.

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

• An overview of how digital technologies can integrate with the Australian Curriculum: General Capabilities for your discipline area.
• A link to a curated collection of digital resources, in which a single resource/artefact is selected to underpin the design of a learning sequence to maximise the potential of digital pedagogy. If you are combining more than one element, identify both/all of them.
• Your curator’s insight to articulate how a selected single resource/artefact in your curated collection can 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/artefact. The planning should reflect the pedagogy identified in your pedagogy overview, as well as the use of digital technologies to transform learning as identified in your ICT alignment plan with evidence of your knowledge of a range of ICT resources that engage students in their learning (APST 3.4). You should show how you will implement teaching strategies for using ICT to expand curriculum learning opportunities for students (APST 2.6), as well as demonstrate an understanding of the relevant issues and the strategies available to support the safe, responsible and ethical use of ICT in learning and teaching (APST 4.5).
• A brief profile of a representative student in your class, including their learning needs.
• A narrative, written from the perspective of the student (first person), showing how your students will respond to the digital pedagogy that you have identified in your planning.
• A reflection on your professional learning and networks that supports AITSL Graduate Standards 6.2 and 7.4.

As in Assessment Task 1, these artefacts are regarded as documentation of your learning from Topics 5 – 10. It is not intended that they are only created for assessment purposes. Thus, it is anticipated that they are generated progressively throughout the term in response to the unit materials and activities.

• 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