EDUC 431 – October 1, 2019 – REFLECTION

What can I say? I am always wowed every time I talk to or listen to Dr. Valerie Irvine, EdTech Professor at the University of Victoria. She inspired me on how I designed EDUC 431 at UNBC for Teacher Education. During the summer, Valerie reached out to me… as “regular educator using EdTech as part of professional learning” to come is as one of many guest speakers to her #TIEgrad MEd EdTech summer intensive masters course. How could I refuse and I was in good company… Jesse Miller, Alec Couros, and Trevor MacKenzie. I was very humbled but also very inspired about the idea that Twitter is a platform where EVERYONE is a learner.

Valerie came to my EDUC 431 class to talk about “Technology as Social Justice.” I love her focus on LEARNER PREFERENCES and her mindset of WHY NOT? Take a close look of the photo above of a selfie for her #tiegrad class from the summer. Yes, I have needs. I had to do a selfie. Look carefully. She’s got people in a class setting on campus at UVIC meeting face-to-face, she’s got some students video conferencing in remotely (or locally) individually, and small groups video conferencing in who live in the same community. They are attending this class in real-time synchronously online and face-to-face. She models what she believes in: Multi-Access Learning Environments. How can learning be accessible?

Amazingly… Valerie designs her presentation to EDUC 431 using Twitter, Google Docs, and BlueJeans and engages learners by participating in an edu-chat with REALLY tough questions about student choice, bias, modality access. If students wanted to answer publicly online, they responded with the Q1/A1 format on Twitter. If students wanted to answer the questions anonymously, then they responded on a Google Doc that was shared on Twitter. This is about choice!!! And we are wrestling with some of those ideas of private versus public, but Valerie creates a learning space where students can choose and have a similar learning experience. She also taught me to copy and paste Twitter links and embed them into my blog on WordPress. Yay! See below for my responses to her questions.

Q1: Why do we need to have a required face-to-face experience as a class?

Q2: Should an institution’s or instructor’s modality preference override student accessibility? Or student preference of modality? 

Q3: Does/should modality bias exist? 

Q4: Should we allow flexibility in modality accessibility (e.g., multi-access)? What are the implications? Does your institution have a policy on cyber proxy?

To read the responses of UNBC Teacher Education program who posted publicly on Twitter, go to the hashtag #UNBCED. Their responses are incredible. Although you cannot unpack what you really mean on Twitter when given only 280 characters, so my responses were quite short. That said, much of what I was saying is that we are being policy compliant to educate and certify our teacher candidates, thus we have face-to-face learning. Valerie’s presentation got us to think about PEDAGOGY or PLATFORM? (sorry, it might not be those exact words… but the concept is there). What is good pedagogy and does the modality matter?

THANK YOU VALERIE… it was a jammed packed, passion-driven presentation about Technology as Social Justice. You’ve asked tough questions and you are so willing to inquire and challenge the status quo. I really appreciate that. Even this presentation to my EDUC 431 influenced my planning for my EDUC 491 course next semester. I am so inspired to challenge myself and my modality bias to make learning accessible to all students. I can’t wait for our next EdTech connection regarding what’s next for education and what I will learn next. Looking forward.