For my final project in OLTD 504 I decided to used Canvas by Instructure and create an online classroom for my students. I have been wanting to do this for a while but when looking more in depth with Moodle and Desire2Learn, I was a little put off by some of their features and thought to myself, “there must be something better”. Well after talking to Avi about possibilities, I started with Edmodo but something still wasn’t grooving with what I wanted, enter Canvas.

I am hooked! I have been using Canvas for about 4 days now and in that time I have probably spent close to 20 hours playing around (thank goodness for toddler nap times / early bed times and newborns who don’t know that they are being forced to learn and new LMS with mommy). My husband has also said that it seems like I am borderline addicted. I have said that it is not an addiction, it is a process where things just seem to get into a rhythm and flow and it is hard to stop. I have now almost completed my grade 8 course that I will be rolling out in September to my students and I have started on my grade 9 course.

One of the features that I love about Canvas is the fact that I can take everything from my grade 8 course and copy it all into my grade 9 course. Although there are a lot of things that are not applicable, it is also nice that a simple click of a garbage can deletes everything that is not needed. This is also nice because I know that my grade 9 course will be easier and faster to set up than my grade 8 one was (although with knowing how I did
everything in the grade 8 course would also help make everything easier). I also like the fact that Canvas is free to use and it is online so you do not need access granted to you by someone else, you just sign up and get started. Even though this is a free LMS, I think that even if I had to pay for it, it is worth it. Apparently the participant limit is 200 people but as I max out at 40 students, that should be more than enough room for
me.

I am very excited to use this platform for many reasons but peer feedback / communication is at the top of my list. As I was inserting assignments I realized that one of my options was ‘require peer reviews’ and I am very excited for my students to try this out. For next year I wanted my students to have a peer collaboration mark embedded in their learning and now I have the ability to easily incorporate it. I am also looking forward to my students using the discussion boards and tools to connect with one another because I know that they are not going to be living within a close proximity to each other so hopefully with discussion boards and office hours via Blackboard Collaborate, they will have the greatest amount of peer communication that I can think of possibly giving them.

My students complete work in booklets called PACEs (Program for Accelerated Christian Education) for parts of certain courses and these booklets come with paper based tests that they have to mail to me at the end of each quarter. So far I have been able to take the tests from the Social Studies PACEs and put them online so my students can complete the electronic version and save one more thing that has to be mailed. My hope is that I will be able to get a lot more of my tests and quizzes loaded into Canvas but with that being said, I know that math will always have to be paper based as I want students to be able to show their work and get part marks for their work, even if they do not get the final answer correct. English is the other subject that I am
struggling with to decide if it should be put online or kept as a paper based version so for now it is staying paper based but I might be changing that in the future. For now I am trying to figure out how to load pictures into tests so that I don’t have to eliminate any questions so once I have figured that out, I will be a very happy
person.

There you have it, I am a huge supporter of Canvas and I could talk your ear off about how great it is if you let me (just ask my sister and husband - and newborn daughter for that matter alt). There are so many great things about it and I just want to meet the person who created it and give him or her a great big hug and tell them how great their LMS is!  If you would like to know more, at the risk of me talking your ear off even more than I already have in this post, just contact me and I will fill you in on the awesomeness that is Canvas.

Communication and Discourse

 The first community and discourse tool that I always go to is Blackboard Collaborate.  The way that this
is set up is just a great area for students to connect in real time without having to be face to face. I really like how it encourages students to converse and make connections with each other. The blackboard function is also very handy in allowing students to show their work or bring others to websites that inspire or intrigue them and explain everything as they go through it. There can be issues with this program and having a lag time but it is the best tool that I have found so far in helping students to build a sense of community without living in
the same physical community and attending the same physical classroom.

 Another thing that I find would be helpful for students to communicate and collaborate if they did not necessarily have to do it in real time would be WordPress. I have not used this resource with my own students yet as I do not have enough students to do collaborative work with but this seems like a tool that can be used synchronously as well as asynchronously to allow students the chance to blog and write about their learning and then share it with myself as their teacher as well as other students to get feedback on certain items. This seems like a great tool to use as well as blackboard because although blackboard is in real time, it is the teacher who has to set up the “room” so students do not have as much freedom in when they can use it as they
would with WordPress.

 VoiceThread is something else that I am very interested in looking into for the future. I am not as much of a fan that it is a paid for service so I would be using some of my classroom funds instead of being able to freely use it with no fees as I am with other programs. I have not come across many teachers who have used it but I am sure that they are out there and I have just not thought to ask them. According to their website, VoiceThread allows someone to “upload, share and discuss documents, presentations, images, audio files and video. Over 50 different types of media can be used in a VoiceThread.” This seems like a very worthwhile program to have but I am still left to wonder if there is something else out there that is free to use so that it would be more accessible to my students.

 Edmodo is another program that I have just discovered, although it is more like the LMS Moodle but looks more simplified, I am curious to test it out and see if it elevates some of my hesitations with using Moodle and how it is hosted seems to be very user friendly. Teachers are able to create an alert for interesting links for their students that seems to work almost like a twitter type function within the tool. There is an app that students can download to an iPhone to use it on the go. This is set up to be like a social network and have that feel so that the students are engaged as well as being connected at the same time. Badges are something that is new to me but with this tool teachers are able to award them to their students and this is something that I will be looking into once I have more time to play around in it.
 
Content and Organization

 Anyone who knows me well knows that I am big on organization, my files on my computer are all set up in a certain way and it is just how my brain works the best to process everything. Organization, I think, is a big factor in helping students with their success in learning. If everything is given to them in a chaotic mess then they will constantly be searching everywhere to find what they are looking for. When I get my list of students at the beginning of the year, we first figure out how they would like to split their work for the terms (all at once or half and half through the year) and from there I send my students a CD with a timetable set out for them as well as all of their assignments for the year in clearly labeled folders and files. I think my students like to have everything in a nice little package like this but I would also like to try to move past just the CD and have all of my assignments and expectations on a website so they are easily accessible on the go if my students are not home or do not know where they placed the CD (and do not have it loaded on their computer).

 As I learn more and more about Weebly and create more in depth sites using it, this is something that I have been thinking about using for my course content. The downside that I see with this though is the privacy issue.  As far as I know you cannot password protect a Weebly site and in that case anyone at anytime could have access to all of my assignments for my students and could reproduce them as their own without my knowledge. This is where I think that something such as Moodle (although it is a big of a process to set up) would be nicer to use and password protect.  
 
I also think that GoogleSites might be something else that I would be interested at looking into as it claims  that you can “control who can view and edit” which would take away my big worry from the Weebly site. I have never used Google Sites but because it is something that links to other things such as GoogleDocs and GoogleCalendar, it might be something that I am very interested in learning about. The downside that I could see with using this is the student needs an email to have access and with some of my students, the parents do not allow their children to have their own email (because of their age) so that would pose a problem.

 Google Calendar seems like something that, because it is cloud based, would be easy to set up and share with my students. For the most part my students are self-directed and self-motivated learners that can choose when they would like to accomplish certain assignments. I think that in the coming years as I have more students and want to incorporate more collaborative work I will have to start using something such as google calendar so that my students are all on the same time frame and getting work done at the same time so when they come to collaborative work, they can all contribute equally. The drawback is that this does not link to any LMS but for where I am right now, that is okay because I am not sure that it would be the best path for me.

 With these tools it will just have to be more investigation on my part to see which one works the best for what I am trying to accomplish.

 Assessment

 I would like to use GoogleSites and some of the other tools available through Google, I think that GoogleDocs
would be something else that would be beneficial to my students if I were to set it up in my courses. I would still have the issue of some students without an email that I would have to figure out but from my own experience using GoogleDocs in the OLTD program, it is something that is as close as you can get to peer collaboration and editing as possible in an online asynchronous setting. The only thing that worries me a little bit is the fact that this is hosted in the USA and their privacy and security protocols may not be the same for BC.

 In following with my being in awe with what I have learned about the capabilities of Google, I am interested in Avi’s posting of GoogleForms. I am very keen on allowing my students to complete self and peer evaluations and in finding out that I can do this all with GoogleForms, I am starting to think that Google, in all its capabilities, is starting to sound like its own mini LMS. I am also very interested in the capabilities of
GoogleForms to provide students the opportunity to use it as a quiz platform as right now all my students are doing their quizzes via pen and paper and then either faxing or snail mailing them to me. If I were able to set up quizzes online and have the students accomplish them through that, it would not only help with cutting down the amount of paper needed to complete assignments but it would also help me to mark things faster.

 Soometa, as described by Jane C seems like something that would be interesting to have my students use for
presentations. I have had experiences as someone viewing a presentation that did not work out so well that this is something that I am very hesitant about. I am aware that all electronic tools will have the possibility of hiccups and issues but with presenting, as it is usually in real time, it usually presents the most issues. Prezi, for example, has caused many headaches to colleagues and because of just hearing about their frustrations, I would be hesitant to use it myself. Soometa seems to be different and I am interested in looking into it further to see if the ‘hiccups’ would be alleviated using it opposed to Prezi.

 Asynchronous and synchronous learning are both being used in the online learning environment. As both a student and a teacher of online learning I have seen that although both have many advantages, there are still a few drawbacks. A big advantage that I appreciate of asynchronous work is that you can complete the work on your own time within a given timeframe. Take this blog post for example, I am writing it while my daughter is
sleeping because this time of day is when I can get the most accomplished. Someone else writing the same blog post may choose to complete it on their lunch break at work because that is when they found the time that works for them. Synchronous work is great for connecting students and making them feel like they are part of the bigger group because they are able to converse in real time with each other.

 As great as both are, there are still some drawbacks. As a mother of a newborn and a toddler, synchronous work is very hard for me, especially when the time that seems to work for everyone else is basically the worst timing for myself so I am forced to make arrangements so that my entire focus can be on the class or task at hand. As a teacher I have seen a few of my students stumble with the asynchronous aspect of schooling as they are not having to converse with me daily to have me tell them what to do, it is easy for them to fall behind a little bit and I have to make it a point to check in with my students and the parents twice a week to keep
them caught up with their work. Of course this is all my own opinions and what I personally see as drawbacks and benefits of the two versions of online learning and I am sure as I learn more about it and about more delivery tools (LMS and non-LMS) that my thoughts and opinions will take more shape and may even change. 

It is all about how we view the situation we are in with what is going on with us personally and that is what makes online learning great at times and a struggle at times.


  

This week I built my first ever “unit” in Moodle.  I have to admit, it was a very large learning curve (not as straight forward as I thought it would be) and now I can see how and why my professors in years past have gotten so irritated with it. If you are to just learn everything there is to know about Moodle all by yourself and try to build something from scratch solo, it could take many hours. I am lucky enough to have a preset unit to work with so that made life a lot easier. I also really enjoyed learning about Moodle in a jigsaw fashion and having video tutorials made up by my colleagues to watch and go along with instead of just static readings. Finally, the help of a peer to critique and give me suggestions along the way was something that I am sure not many other teachers get the opportunity to have in other situations. Although Moodle is a very complex LMS, I now see a lot of benefits to it and I am excited to start using it with my own courses and students.

 There were many things that I did not even know were possible with Moodle until the presentations by my colleagues and now that I am more aware I am actually quite excited to start preparing and not nearly as
scared as I was before entering this experience. It was suggested that database would be a great way to complete novel studies and since my students are expected to complete a few a year, I am sure this is one of the first things that I will be setting up in my course. Another thing that I found very helpful was choice; it seems like a great way to help students select a novel and as a teacher I can make sure not everyone is doing the same book but rather they are evenly spread out throughout the term so each time a novel study is being done, the students have other peers to discuss with. Quiz is something else that I think I will be using as much as possible because I find it is hard to get students to physically mail me a test but if I can put them all online and their marks and answers are submitted automatically it saves me the stress of trying to track down tests and the family the stress of trying to get it to me through scanning or snail mail.

 Something that I am not too sure that I will be using with Moodle would be the grades function. I am more of an excel spreadsheet where I can see all of my student’s marks for different assignments and from there do my own calculations instead of worrying about putting in the correct values in the Moodle sections. I can see the value of using grades in Moodle but I also don’t think that I would ever be able to fully rely on it. Something else that I don’t think it worth trying to set up with Moodle would be math type questions in quizzes. The calculated questions I found were really hard to work with and needed to be typed in such a particular way that it really wasn’t worth trying to work with. Another reason I do not see value in trying to figure out the calculated questions is that math is something that has to be written out because if there is a mistake along the way at least partial marks can be given up until the mistake occurs and if you are only giving the students a chance to put in the answer they are unable to show their thought process to get there.

 All in all I am very glad to have gone through the experience of learning Moodle and I am now very excited to personalize it (or another program similar to it such as Edmodo) for my students to use in the years to come!

 There is a debate going that computers and delivery technologies do not necessarily help with student achievement and engagement but it is merely another way of presenting the information and if it happens to engage the students then it will help. I can see both sides of this argument and through some readings I am now aware of more opinions on the matter. We are now in the 21st century and in being in this century, we as teachers need to realize that our students are now utilizing technology more so than in years past, and as technology grows and more delivery systems become available, students may continue to shift toward online learning and e-textbooks and away from brick and mortar learning and print. As a university student, why would you pay upwards of one hundred dollars for a textbook that you may be able to get for half price on an e-reader or even for free on your computer? Through this, I also see how copyright is also becoming more and more of an issue and in the electronic world it will be interesting to see how it changes in the coming years.

 With brick and mortar schools (well all schools for that matter) I have learned that the budget is one of the biggest concerns. With the introduction of e-textbooks for a fraction of the cost of print, it allows for students to have a copy of the book that they are able to access from school and at home while saving money in the budget that could go towards something else. I have most of my students choosing to go for the online e-text versions of as many books as possible because not only are they saving money (they have a certain amount they are able to spend on texts and resources each year) but they are also reusable just like print versions and are not going to have the same amount of “wear and tear” as a print book.  This is also helpful for the online
learning student who has more than one sibling as the family is able to purchase the copy of the book once and use it for all of their children (in the case of one of my families, that is eight children) before giving it away or selling it.

 As a teacher a big benefit of having e-texts is the opportunity to copy a page and send it in an email or post it on a program such as Blackboard to walk a student through a problem they might be having, which eliminates the problem of having to have a scanner to scan and then attach a page and creates more work for all involved. Obviously this would not work to do for the entire textbook but when a student does not live in driving distance to get help, it would eliminate some frustration. I have also found it helpful at the beginning of the school year when resources and texts do not get to my students in a timely manner, I am able to change my personal password for my copy to a student password and give them access to my copy until they receive  theirs.

 The big downside that I can see with purchasing a book and then using it for many years is the fact that I find a lot of publishers change one or two things in a textbook and then reprint the textbook as a new edition.  Although this means that you may have students working from two different editions, the changes I have found to be very minimal so it is more possible to work with. As a teacher this is where having e-versions of texts is nice because you are not having to purchase a full price text and find room for it, but instead you are just having to buy a code or CD that costs less and takes up less space.  
 
There will always be shifts in online learning and the resources and tools we use and I am interested in seeing where that takes us and how it helps support us as teachers in the online learning community as well as our  students.

eLearning has been around since about 1995 according to Stephen Downes which is interesting to me because I remember that computer labs in schools at that time was rare.  I also think how my family has just
purchased our first computer and had dial up internet. I think about how much time I spend each day on the internet for school, work and checking emails and I often wonder how much it would be different if we were still on the snail pace dial up system. 
 
Through my education degree program I did not hear about eLearning or distance education. I remember being a month away from completing my education degree and hearing about eLearning for the first time, not from a professor but actually from a friend of mine who was enrolling her daughter into a distance learning school.  The idea stuck with me and intrigued me as I knew quite a bit about technology and I also knew that I had a child on the way so entering a brick and mortar school was a few years off. I looked into different schools around the province and less than a year after receiving my education degree I was offered a position with a distance learning school teaching the ages that I have always wanted to teach!

 When I think about the evolution of eLearning, it is not only in the world around me but also in my own mind.  The more I explore the topic, the more I am learning about the world of eLearning and in turn my own understandings and opinions are changing and branching off into different directions. Digital Web Magazine talks about the information available to students as “(a) vision of the Web in which information is broken up into "microcontent" units that can be distributed over dozens of domains. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we're looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways”. Through this students are able to pick out the pieces of information that are relevant to them and apply it to their own learning.


 I am a big supporter of student led learning using inquiry and community of learners approach and I am constantly learning that eLearning and the tools available are able to be utilized in a way to help foster the learning that is taking place when the students are given an opportunity. I am excited to see how the implementation of LMS such as Desire2Learn, Moodle and other programs such as Blackboard Collaborate will help students to connect with each other and engage with their peers to expand their thoughts. I believe that eLearning will allow students the opportunity to be in charge of their own learning and Stephen Downes even states “In learning, these trends are manifest in what is sometimes called "learner-centered" or "student-centered" design. This is more than just adapting for different learning styles or allowing the user to change the font size and background color; it is the placing of the control of learning itself into the hands of the learner” which seems to agree.
 
 
Downes, S. (2005, October). E-learning 2.0. Retrieved from http://elearnmag.acm.org/featured.cfm?aid=1104968

 MacManus, R., & Porter, J. (2005, May 4). Web 2.0 design: Bootstrapping the social web. Retrieved from
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_2_for_designers