Taking the time to sit down and write about my action plan has been a long time coming. I’ve been trying to find a solution to my action plan question…

“How might we promote organization and student ownership while relaying the importance of independence in a personalized framework?”

What I was looking to solve by asking this question was :

“Is there a tool that can help consolidate all of the materials for the personalized units (explained in my last blog post) where students would only have to go to ONE place?”

I’m going to take you through some of my thought process, so bear with me. I promise I’ll get to my action plan!

Some things that my action plan is aiming to fix:

1. The organization – I want students to have to go to ONE place, not many to go to see and use the materials for the unit that is interactive.
2. I want to provide timely feedback, with less work from me. Can I leverage technology to help?
3. I want to make it at least seem like there are multiple entry points (less linear)
4. Is there a way to make tracking easier for the teacher?

After some brainstorming at Cohort21 F2F #2, in my mind there were several routes to take:

1. Create an iBook for the unit.
2. Create an iTunes U course for the unit.
3. Create a Google Site to house the information for the unit.
4. Create a Blackboard site using course sites.
5. Use Google Slides.
6. Someone at Cohort21 also suggested Hapara.

So I did what any list-loving person does and created a Pros/Cons list for each:

Tool	Pros	Cons
iBook	very user friendly, visually appealing, interactive Can embed Geogebra Applets	Students would have to re-download iBook if any changes were made May seem overwhelming for students to have such a large file with entire unit
iTunes U Course	Students do not have to download iBooks attached, so I could attach many iBooks (possibly one for each topic) The private course seems like there is teacher tracking embedded	Only public courses can be used with MacBooks (all of our grade 9 students use MacBooks) There may not be a quick way to make it public
Google Site	Can embed Edpuzzle, Geogebra applets, Google forms etc… Could make visually appealing for students and have everything in one place	May seem linear if only on webpage – would have to have many sub pages Not interactive (iBook has hover feature)
Blackboard	Has a great way to create quizzes that self-mark	Seems like dated technology Not able to embed the things I would like to Not an immersive experience for students
Google Slides	Can link from one slide to another easily Does not have to be set up linearly	Not interactive Does not seem as user friendly and immersive for students
Hapara	Great for Google docs/spreadsheets etc.	We may not always use Google docs/spreadsheets. Often they are PDF’s or videos.

 

After many lists and discussions here are my first choices:

1. My first choice as of right now would be iTunes U because I like the ability to link iBooks. iBooks are great for us, and as far as I understand this would provide an opportunity for students to open the iBooks without having to download them. This means that if we changed anything there would be an update and students would not have to download the newest version. However, there seems to be some technology issues with this, as a course must be public to use it on a MacBook. Because of this, I don’t know if this will be a viable option (as much as I want it to be – Maybe one day!)

2. My second choice would be an iBook that would contain the entire unit. It has all of the user friendliness and interactive nature, and creates an immersive experience for students. There is a problem that if we, as teachers updated it, the students would have to re-download it every time.

3. My third choice would be to create a Google Site. This seems like the most viable option as there are capabilities to embed Edpuzzle (I’ve been wanting to use it for a while), Geogebra applets, and Google Forms as quizzes. I could also have Flubaroo self-mark the Google forms to give instant feedback to the students.

To end my rambling (again), what I’ve decided to do for my action plan is:

• Create either a Google Site or an iBook for our linear relationships unit in grade 9 to house our information. I’m still deciding between the two.
• If possible:Embed Edpuzzle videos, Geogebra Applets and Google forms marked by flubaroo with the results emailed to students.

Some things I’m still wondering:

• Is there a way to import an image into Google Sites and have multiple parts of the image link to different things?
• Is there a way to create a bank of questions in Google Forms and have students link to a random set of questions with one click?
• Which will serve my needs and wants more. An iBook or a Google Site?
• What else can I incorporate that I haven’t thought about? – I need to be careful about this, since I don’t want technology to lead the way I teach, but I’m curious what’s out there.