Brittany's Education Blog

Last class, we learned about digital citizenship challenges and explored topics in terms of Masters project.

In terms of 3D printing, Krystal and I focused on Legal and Ethical Aspects

The pro about 3D printing is that even if people don’t have a lot of experience designing, they are able to use models that are under Creative Commons licenses.

A challenge in the elementary years of education is often related to ownership as kids often say “I made this” instead of quoting who it is from as they are unaware of the importance of giving credit to others.

As such we thought a key example would be for children to be more specific and have an outline such as:

I got this design from …..(TinkerCad, Thingiverse, Printables etc) and I modified it myself or I modified it with a teachers help. Teaching children about Creative Commons objects and rules is thus important and can be done early on. From that students can then make it their own while honouring who originally created the design.

An easy goal for students is to thus learn when they start making presentations, 3D designs etc to make sure to credit pictures and anything that is not your own. As we spoke about last year, with sites like Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay etc.

All in all, for this post I wanted to expand on What my Digcitcommit is. To further elaborate what is one thing that I will commit to this year to promote digital citizenship in your work or life.

My Digcitcommit is to make clear connections to the digital world as much as possible with students. When teaching how to be a good friend, expand that to how to be a good friend online. How to follow rules at school and online etc. It is my belief that the earlier students learn and are aware of digital literacy, they are able to be responsible online as they can see the impact. Transferring that impact and daily situations to younger students is thus powerful as they can learn to understand how words and actions hurt just as much online as they do in person.

Finally another key challenge with technology and digital citizenship is to make all involved aware and provide tools for not only students, but also to their families so that this knowledge and awareness is practiced and shared at home, at school and in all aspects of life.

For older students, we talked about how powerful it can be to share things as simple as screen time and talk about the impacts of screentime in our daily lives. Making personal connections is very helpful and this exercise also makes me reflect on my screen use, especially during and post Covid. I think there has been a huge increase in screen times for most people and I wonder what research will say later. The balance is thus important to teach. Taking away screens may not be the solution, but teaching skills to balance and learn effective use is important.

As ISTE Digital Citizenship said focus on the how instead of don’t.

3D printing and Open Educational Resources

Last week, I chose to focus on our pod meeting, our pair meeting and our 1:1. I submitted a grant funding proposal that I plan to share in my final project and with other organizations. So instead of writing a blog post last week, I dove in to looking at funding options, locating 3D printing companies and options, as well as gathered some important quotes to help us refine our purpose, problem and question for our final project. Here is a nicely laid out MakerBot Grant Guide, that I found helpful. We have now created the outline for our paper and started to write up our stories. Along with continuing our research and finding the theoretical frameworks that we will focus on. So far we are looking at constructivism/socio-constructivism, experiential learning, self-determination theory and TPACK. 3D printing provides choice, differentiation and hands-on learning experiences and we look forward to discovering more.

This weeks blog post I wanted to focus on Open Education Resources. It was empowering to discuss the possibilities of Creative Commons licences. Although, I had some background in CC ressources for post secondary students through the workshops at the Digital Scholarships Commons, which have all lesson plans CC licensed – here is an example of the 3D Print and Design workshop. I never really found good resources that are available with this same license for teachers. As teachers, this is interesting to reflect on. For me teaching is all about collaborating and finding what best meets students needs. However when it comes to finding resources sometimes that means reinventing the wheel even if it exists somewhere as often the resources isn’t accessible or freely available. The BCTF has started to address this issue and created a shared bank of resources, similarly in the past SharedEd BC tried to do the same. It is my belief that Open Educational Resources could change education, if teachers knew about them and contributed to the growth. With many CC licences you are able to modify resources to meet the needs of your class and address growth, instead of starting from scratch. This saves time and money. Although some people and educators, may be afraid to share their personally created resources, they shouldn’t be, no resource is perfect and more brains together can benefit from it but also add to it to make it work.

Furthermore, to tie this to Krystal and I final project, we plan to make an Open Education Resource to address this need in terms of 3D printing. Many articles, addressed the concern of not having enough resources and support. However with this project there will be a community of support and lessons available.

Cheng et al (2023), for instances stated that “some challenges, including the lack of 3D printers, technical support, ability to print 3D objects, time to learn how to print 3D objects, and the difficulty in connecting 3D printing to curriculum standards and creating lessons.” (p.196).

Ultimately Open Ed Resources could benefit not only teachers but also parents, students and the broader community to seek learning and meet their needs on their own time and be able to reach out and connect with others to help as needed.

For the post 3 of my Edci 569/572 class, I wanted to consider the above question and wanted to discuss what educators need in regards to digital literacy. First of all, my belief is that not all educators are well equipped to teach digital literacy. Ultimately there are many factors and experiences of educators and some may be very well prepared and others less so. This comes down to many aspects including previous experiences, education, districts, funding, access etc. Notably when I think of this question, I think about my last 3 years of teaching and how that only in my second year of my master was I introduced to BC’s Digital Literacy Framework. This framework may have been mentioned or linked in previous courses but was never discussed, nor were we as learners able to critically think about it. With technology constantly developing, I believe that this framework and curriculum such as ADST, should of been explored in my undergrad when becoming a teacher. Should it only be ADST curriculum that uses technology… no but for many educators that is the case as they do not feel equipped to teach technology.

Another key example, is this year all our district desktops got replaced with a little page explaining how to connect the new monitors to the projector, dual screen etc. This is just one example of how technology changes and how educators are thrown new things to learn daily.

So what do educators need:

• Pro D Days that focus on technology within our schools or open source apps we can use as educators.
• A shared platform of resources and lesson plans for educators that are accessible and easy to teach and available in French Immersion (lack of French resources is often a problem).
• University courses that look at Digital Literacy Frameworks, technology etc in all program (I was lucky enough to do the Professional Certificate in Informational Communication and Technology and get some of this experience earlier).
• Have the Digital Scholarship Commons at UVic or other similar groups promote workshops and tools that use key digital skills in various education classes.
• Mandate a technology competency in practicums and for yearly professional development or even September training (In 2024, I believe to do our job as educators effectively we must be able to first use some technology, so that we can teach required skills and knowledge to our students).

The plan with mine and Krystal‘s final project is to meet some of these needs so educators feel ready to teach digital literacy skills in line with 3D printing (which is our focus). All in all you can’t use a printer until you know the safety procedures and design software in order to not break or burn yourself (Clayton outlines the 3D printer well in his project . In the coming weeks, Krystal and I will look into our project and decide on our specific topic, problem, purpose, question in relation to 3D printing and Elementary and hopefully we can create some useful resources for teachers worldwide.

From my final practicum report the only mention of technology is under the below standard (6) which says that technology is used to thoughtfully deliver curriculum and does not obscure the content. Rather than the educators has provided safety measures and outlined key skills students can use with technology or something along those lines.

In a world with lots of diversity and evolving technology and tools, I see modality in education becoming more and more towards multi-access as it focuses on needs and inclusivity. This week I really liked the connection to Shelley Moores inclusive circle images seen in this video.

When reviewing Shelley Moore’s video, it makes me think of the amount of times technology is integrated instead of purposefully used in the classroom. Similarly shouldn’t we include technology as an option for modality instead of integrate it for everyone. That is what Shelley Moore explains regarding these terms. Yet, many articles discuss the importance of integrating technology. Are we sure, we want to integrate technology instead of including.

On that same thought, I believe that based on the diverse needs students have regarding mental health, diverse abilities, family dynamics, trauma etc, access to flexible learning is needed and therefore I think and hope that the future of modality for education will shift to having more options for students and families to be able to do Face to Face when they need and shift to online when they need. Therefore the modality of Multi-Access seems like the one that will best meet all needs.

As teachers, when we were asked the following focus question, “can you think about a case where a learner was unable to access education due to modality or inflexibility in learning design?” We could all think of a specific situation, although I won’t go into depth on my blog post. Do note that access to education and learning design are very important considerations. Anxiety is very predominant in people and students today and as educators we want to be able to meet that need and all needs, but modality and systems can sometimes be in the way of doing that. With schools like PSII in Victoria BC (I know there are other schools, but my brother had a very great experience with the different structure for learning that PSII provides).

The various structures and terms that we have in the history of education is constantly being looked at and I believe as people become more aware of modalities and options; and as they become more normalized through the public system, then the preferred option may move to multi-access as it meets NEEDS at all times.

I am looking forward to this term and looking ahead at the upcoming assignments, I am excited to get a start on my final masters project. During the summer, my Masters project partner and I have dove into some research and we are keen to get started.

Furthermore, upon reading this weeks articles, The Landscape of Merging Modalities and Twenty Years of Tech. Here are some of my reflections. I really appreciated the timeline of tech that the Twenty Years of Tech walked us through. I found it very interesting especially in terms of my digital badging research background and interest and where that timeline fit within other developments. This made me further reflect on my future research of 3D printing and how 3D printing is not even mentioned in this timeline. Yet, I believe this is very important in our technology timeline. There are many sites that look specifically at the 3D printing timeline, notably this infographic provides a great summary and as we dive into our research more, I am sure we will be able to see cross connections of other technologies that are growing at similar times.

Another key aspect and consideration that was brought forward in The Landscape of Merging Modalities was that:

“We must focus on the meaning of our words in order to create a shared understanding for the future of our academic discourse, our professional practice, and our learners.”

As teachers I and Master of Educational Technology students, I believe this is a vital consideration, as meaningful design and practice is so important for our learners. In an ever changing technology world, there are many opportunities but we must carefully consider what already exist to help us all grow.

Finally as an end note, I was never aware that there was a digital literacy framework and I believe that this framework should be widely shared and looked at by all educators. As all students should get this experience and this document serves as a great guide. It is great that they say the suggested grades is just a guidance, as for with 3D printing and most technologies, I see the benefits of starting learners young to learn to use technology to their learning benefit. I wanted to share the link to the Digital Literacy Framework as it should be shared.