Topic #1: How can teachers effectively build relationships by encouraging safe communication and interactions in K-12 online & open learning spaces? What did you already know, what do you know now based on the course readings and activities, what do you hope to learn?
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I find the thought of facilitating and encouraging safe communication and interactions online to be overwhelming. With my minimal experience as an educator, I feel that I am still learning about safety regulations and various online platforms as well. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers were forced to rapidly move their classroom online, which facilitated a huge learning curve for many of them. In our training, educators are taught to be flexible and adaptable, because providing instructions to children who are each uniquely different, you need to be able to make changes in a moments notice. Conducting online learning during 2020, makes it all the more imperative that teachers understand and actively promote healthy online interactions. Prior to my years in the Bachelor of Education program at the University of Victoria, I did not have many experiences with online learning or interactions. During my degree, one of the most valuable platforms I learned about was blogging.
This communication method is an excellent way to have students interact with one another. I believe an effective method to facilitate this learning technique, is to have one blog forum, where the teacher will post a weekly topic and each student is required to respond. In addition, having learning buddies or teams, allows students the opportunity to have their blog post read and feedback provided to them, as well as reading their peers posts and giving them feedback. To ensure that these online interactions are successful, the teacher needs to be up to date with online safety regulations and The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). With these in mind, the teacher will need to use a certified safe platform for education purposes, and ensure that students know how to kindly interact with one another, and understand how to write positive constructive criticism. If there are students that are known to struggle with writing kind interactions, the teacher should set-up the blog platform that will allow the teacher to approve any post before they are public. If there are any questionable posts, the teacher can then have a meeting with the student and provide additional resources to teach them about safe and respectful interactions online.
Through the use of online communication platforms such as a blog forum that allows for feedback, teachers can be in constant communication with their students and track their progress. This is an excellent way to build relationships with students through virtual learning. Besides blogging, Google applications, such as Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Classroom allow for students and teachers to collaborate on assignments and add comments and feedback, and communicate through safe platforms. The key to building relationships is communication. If one is solely looking at online learning, the ability to communicate frequently in real time is especially important.
During this course, I hope to continue to learn about the various safety regulations and resources I can use when providing online learning. I am excited to become more familiar with new online applications, such as Slack. Knowing how important communication is for building relationships, and providing effective instruction, Slack could be a useful tool to facilitate frequent communication with students. Teaching students how to positively interact online, will help them outside of the classroom as well. In 2020, social media is a very prevalent part of young students lives. Though there are positives to these platforms, there are also many downfalls and it can be easily misused. This makes it pivotal to teach students about privacy settings, how to respectfully comment and message online, and what information is stored online even after being "deleted".
In the Handbook of Research on K-12 Online and Blended Learning, part 6, chapter 36: "Social Interaction in K-12 Online Learning" by Amy Garrett Dikkers, the importance of collaboration is reaffirmed in the statement "construction of knowledge is social, with individuals who learn from reflecting on their own thoughts and experiences and sharing them with others" (Dikkers, 2017, p. 509). Collaborating on ideas is vital to understand various perspectives, learn from others experiences, and develop a deeper meaning. This chapter describes three types of online interactions including: learner-content interaction, learner-instructor interaction, and learner-learner interaction. These interactions are crucial during both in-person instruction and online learning. This trio further illustrates the need to use online platforms that allow for real-time communication, multi-person access for students and teachers, and the ability to share resources and embed videos, and images. Dikkers also describes the need for collaborative activities to be an interaction that is "purposeful, meaningful, and explained to students" (Dikkers, 2017, p. 516), this will allow for a deeper understanding of knowledge, engagement in content, and positive communication between students.
The paper, "Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: Twenty-first-century student sorting and tracking" by Priscilla M. Regan and Jolene Jesse, raises an awareness to the ethical concerns of various educational applications, even those deemed as "personalized learning" tools. Regan and Jesse, reveal six ethical concerns: information privacy, anonymity, surveillance, autonomy, non-discrimination, and ownership of information. The authors stress the importance of not oversimplifying these concerns and categorizing them all under the term "privacy", but rather opening up the discussion and fully evaluating all educational applications and what concerns each one may raise for students.
I found both of these readings to be very informative and they challenged the way that I look at educational applications, and though the platform may look beneficial on a surface level, the concerns it will raise for the students privacy, storage of information, and ability to interact with one another is important tor research further and discuss. Moving forward, I would like to familiarize myself with policies in British Columbia, as this is the province where I will be a certified educator, and more specifically, the policies in future school districts that I hope to be hired in. I am excited to be in a course which will broaden my understanding of this topic and answer a lot of my questions. Being aware and open to learning is key, and it is important to have this knowledge to be able to pass it on to our future students.
References:
Garrett Dickers, A. (2018) Social Interaction in K-12 Online Learning. In R. Ferdig & K. Kennedy (Eds.), Handbook of research on K-12 online and blended learning (pp. 509-522 ). Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University ETC Press.
Regan, P., & Jesse, J. (2019). Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: Twenty-first-century student sorting and tracking. Ethics and Information Technology, 21(3), 167-179. DOI: 10.1007/s10676-018-9492-2