As I read through the readings this week, I found the journal article Teaching Online-A Guide to Theory, Research and Practice by C.H. Major, to be quite interesting. I enjoyed learning about the open and distributed education courses that have been offered online at universities and finding out how they were established and administered. It was fascinating to find out just how many different courses and different topics were able to be taught online.
I noticed an overarching theme with all of the online courses that were described in the reading was that they all contained the use of multimodal materials like visual, audio, blogging, or text. During a previous course that I took this summer, called Literacy in the Digital Age, we discussed that to be literate in the 21st century, you need more than the basic literacy skills of reading, writing, and memorizing. Teachers need to be using teaching methods that enhance the students’ 21st century skills of innovation, critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, and communication in order for students to be literate in the digital age. The opportunity for students to critically engage with multimodal materials, evaluate choices, problem solve, and make informed decisions is crucial for students’ literacy in the 21st century, and teachers can facilitate these skills through the use of multimodal technologies and materials. The online courses described in the reading fully facilitate 21st century skills by using multimodal technologies like video, blogging, and audio in all aspects of the course. I also noticed that a majority of the courses mentioned in the reading were largely based on online communication and creating an online community that facilitates the 21st century skill of communication.
As a future teacher, I really appreciated this reading because it showed me various methods that I can use to teach my students to be 21st century learners and thinkers by using open and distributed learning environments. The most interesting course that I read about was the Open Course and Community in Digital Storytelling. In the course’s synopsis, the professor mentions using “the web as a genre of storytelling”, and that throughout the course they “explore concepts of storytelling via visual, design, audio, web and video” (Major, 2015). Both of these quotes describe methods that I would love to use to teach storytelling in my classroom and facilitate 21st century literacy skills.
Major, C. H. (2015). Teaching online: A guide to theory, research, and practice. Johns Hopkins University Press.
August 11, 2021 at 8:00 pm
HI, Ayden!
Your reflection highlights the importance of multimodal materials like visual, audio, blogging, or text. It’s critical to produce learners who are capable of interacting with a multitude of digital mediums that are tied with modern literacy. Viewing the issue of literacy through online learning is critical as an educator because you first need to be cognizant of the various components of open learning and how they are structured and applied. From your reflection, it is evident to me that you view open and distributed learning as a way to introduce your students to a new age of learning. I agree with that sentiment
August 12, 2021 at 4:01 pm
Hi Ayden, I really enjoyed your post this week and I see a lot of similarities in our thinking.
my favourite quote from your post was when you discussed “that to be literate in the 21st century, you need more than the basic literacy skills of reading, writing, and memorizing.” I think it is so spot on that teachers need to be way more cognizant of digital aged learning through a range of different components and concepts, which you also discussed above. Every year teachers are challenged with new ways of thinking and learning, and I think that is what makes our future careers so exciting!
Even though in my original post I described that it was daunting to read the term web based community, I still believe it is such an important concept. When the pandemic first happened and everything was moved online, I lived in Victoria by myself, away from my family, and unfortunately lost my job as a before and after school care leader due to the shutting down of my centre. Luckily, I had some classes that moved to synchronous learning environments where I had to attend lectures every week and really build a connection to many of my peers through class activities and group work, and I can honestly say that the community we built saved me from going down an even darker path. Building online communities in learning, especially in times of hardship, is SO important, and I think I sometimes forget just how important and essential those connections can be.
August 12, 2021 at 5:37 pm
Hi Ayden,
I like how you mentioned that online courses have the ability to help students engage with our 21-century skills (innovation, critical thinking, creativity, problem solving and communication). Although personally I am more drawn to courses that follow a decentralized pathway (focus on groups, communities of learning, etc), I think that distributed pathways are the best way to simultaneously use all 5 of the 21st-century skills. This is because the fluid nature and flexibility to pursue one’s own interests should support constructivism and the inquiry mindset.
I like how you mentioned “An Open Course (and Community) in Digital Storytelling”. The word community is something I typically look for in a course so it was nice to see that was a focus. The design of this course was very similar to the most interesting course for me which was described as “A New Online Course Using Social Media” (Major, 2015, pp. 92) from Patrick Biddix. While both of these courses were DIY and used a prescribed social media site as a platform, the main difference is that the digital storytelling course was open enrollment. MOOCs was a new term that I learned from topic 2’s reading and although I have never taken an open course I am interested in looking into one. I know a lot of institutions started offering free open courses during the pandemic. I was looking at one of the 12-week programming courses offered at Harvard specifically.
August 13, 2021 at 9:21 pm
Hi Ayden,
I found it really interesting reading the different course structures created by the universities while they were adapting to online learning as well. Your connection to Literacy in the Digital Age and the readings were spot on. I wrote a similar belief in my own blog post, it’s crucial that teachers use methods of teaching that enhance the learning environment. Especially when we have access to so many creative digital platforms as technology becomes more developed! We should take advantage of this and adapt to the way the new generation learns and thinks. I really like how you pulled examples from your past experiences and bridged that to Topic 2. Thanks for the great blog post!
August 15, 2021 at 3:52 pm
Hi Ayden,
Thanks for the post. I am really pleased to see you making connections to your future elementary school teaching. What I am wondering about is how small of pieces you would ask your students to do? For example, you mention “visual, design, audio, web and video”. Would you envision your students doing all of these? If not, which ones feel best for elementary? Would you start with one and progress through them one by one? If yes, what order do you think? Why?
Lots of questions. You don’t need to answer on here, but please take some time to consider.
Ryan