For
my final vision artifact, I chose to combine a few of my key takeaways from the
course into something that will hopefully be useful and benefit the teachers at
my school. Through Office 365 I created a Team for us to share helpful
documents, links, lessons, and learning about the different tech tools our
schools received from the district and have begun to purchase ourselves. The
goal of this project was to create an artifact that was accessible, useful,
collaborative, and multimodal.
The
chapter in Richardson’s book, “Our Kids are Illiterate” was one of my first big
takeaways. According to the NCTE list of 21st century literacies, I and most of
the teachers at my school are illiterate. It was a shock to me to realize I
need to prepare my students for a future that I am not prepared for myself. Our
staff (and district) is relatively new to Office 365 and that was part of my
rationale for choosing it as my platform for this artifact. There were certain
aspects that I preferred when testing Wix as a platform. It was attractive. It
was fairly user-friendly and intuitive. It had a lot of options. There were a
few other considerations that were important to me though. I wanted this
catalogue of tools and resources to be easily accessible. I wanted it to
streamline a lot of different media into one area. I needed it to be risk free,
basically having little to no learning curve. I didn’t want the platform to get
in the way of teachers using the tool to access what they need. Compiling
these resources into something we’re already using will hopefully make it
easier for teachers, so that the platform itself doesn’t become a hindrance. It
also opens up opportunities for collaboration, multimedia sharing, and a
greater sense of proficiency with a variety of tech tools. All of these points
push us towards a better grasp on 21st century literacies.
Once I had settled on
this idea, I thought I was going to have to spend a lot of time looking for
resource examples to include. It was a nice surprise to look back on projects
I’d already done in collaboration with other teachers and forgotten about! This
brings up another big takeaway. In her manifesto, Joyce Valenza points out that
with the ubiquity of computers it’s not a question of whether or not you should
share wisdom and collaborate, it’s how you’re going to do that. Richardson
makes the same point that, “what matters is putting it out there so others can
build on it, make it their own...”. Initially, in putting together this
artifact I had asked a few teachers for documents that we’d worked on together
previously and they were happy to share them. Making them available to the
wider community is so important for us, especially as French Immersion
educators, where resources are harder to come by. This process of sharing
challenged me in a few different ways. The first was realizing I had things to
share at all. It’s easy to see great things that other teachers are doing and
discount your own efforts. The second was developing a few new skills of my own
when it comes to digital tools. This was not without its setbacks, but I
eventually I learned how to film a screen and upload it to the site, which is
something I can now share with others.
I did a soft launch of
the Team, adding a few teachers that represent different grade groups in our
school, as well as our district helping teacher (who has graciously answered
many of my questions about the platform). I asked them to share their initial reactions
and opinions with the hope of working out any major bugs before adding the rest
of my colleagues. I will be presenting the Team to my school at an upcoming
staff meeting and will be hosting a few lunchtime sessions on adding content to
the site. My hope is that this artifact will continue to grow and that teachers
at my school will take ownership of it as well. By adding their own resources
and insight we’ll all take a step towards becoming digital creators not just
digital consumers (Zacho).
Link to team:
Works cited:
Valenza, Joyce. "Manifesto for
21st Century Teacher Librarians." 7 Mar. 2013,
Richardson, Will. (2012). Why
School?: How Education Must Change When Learning
and Information Are
Everywhere [Kindle Single]. TED Conferences.
Zacho, Liz. TEDx Talks. "Raising
a Digitally Literate Generation | Lis Zacho |
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