My summary of learning was a work in progress throughout the entire course, and the final project that I decided to do changed many times!
At first, I thought I would do a music parody, featuring Brad Paisley’s Online. However, I worried that I would not quite capture how deep my learning was through the short and sweet lyrics (although some singing from this original inspiration did make its way into my final project!).
Next, completely at a loss of what to do, I considered doing a voice over a prezi to summarize my learning. I was worried that this would be too dry, so I thought maybe it would be funny to have me doing as many pull-ups on the side of the presentation and have the audience guessing how many I could do during the time the presentation took. However, plot twist… I cannot do a pull up.
This took me to my favourite idea and eventually what I went with: A Newscast on my favourite tool — Canva (I really should be a poster child for this company). Unfortunately, this project almost took my soul with it due to slow uploading times, but ultimately I am happy with the final project.
One of the challenges I faced was coming up with a way to succinctly synthesize 4 weeks of jam-packed learning into one short 5-7 minute video! Spoiler alert — I couldn’t. I knew that I wanted to cover the following topics:
- Creating a Blog in 2023. This is a much easier process than it was for me in my undergrad in 2013. The technology has come such a long way, and the Blog Hub was a fantastic way to gain inspiration from my classmates. There were awesome tutorial videos and help was just a quick question away in our q and a discord feed!
- My shift from understanding online and blended learning as two things, to expanding my understanding about online and blended learning as a continuum of practices.
- Thinking deeply and critically about Online Learning Communities and constructivist approaches to learning. I had always considered online learning to be very disconnected from the learners and similar to viewpoint of the articles we had studied, I perceived this practice to be more about surveillance than learning. However, I learned much about building community within online learning environments. I also thought critically about modes of learning and epistemologies. All of the Bates text readings were profoundly useful! It was most impactful to be intentional through Understanding by Design/Backwards by Design when using the ADDIE model, specifically with regards to using intentional assessment.
- Presenting all of the different LMS platforms that I got to explore through my peers, as well as highlighting some of the tech tools that I learned about (Lumi, Flipgrid, Quizziz, Google Jamboard and Forms, etc). Watching Michael Wesch’s videos had me thinking differently about engagement opportunities and the quality of interactions we plan for! I go more into this during my detailed course outline.
- Celebrating our the learning community that we built through Discord and the Blog Hub. I know that there will be relationships that will extend far beyond this course.
- Accessibility, Inclusion and Equity. A much underdiscussed topic that might have profound impacts in levelling the playing field in the future, or shifting typical positional power. There were so many quick fixes that our class was able to try immediately that could be life changing for increase inclusion of participants in our courses!
- Instructional Design and curating an intentional learning environment are understandings that I will utilize forever. I am happy to have built deep understanding about these topics and they will impact every future learning experience that I design.
Please enjoy my mock newscast. I do want to put the disclaimer out there that Tony Bates did not actually appear on my newscast, and that I do not own the rights to the background music playing during the pop-up performance from “Rad Techley, my fictional Brad Paisley doppelganger ” 🤣
Overall, Canva was great to work with, and I paired the recording with the abilities of Clipchamp to get the look and feel that I wanted. Thank you for stopping by to check out my final project! Laugh, Cringe, Cry, Enjoy!
Summary of Learning YouTube Link