Of Crickets and Padlets

Of Crickets and Padlets

https://www.google.com/doodles/
icc-champions-trophy-2017-begins

My Problem

One of my take-aways from the first class meeting was that I did all of the talking. When I stopped - silence...when I asked questions - maybe one response but no discussion. That may have been in part that it was in fact the first real meeting for the group. I, as the course instructor, felt that lecture was not going to serve me, the participants or the content well. In order for me to get a sense of each individual identity and help everyone contribute, I would need to make some changes. I also felt I should utilize an EdTech application to do so.

My Plan

I needed to verify that the participants had read and understood the material assigned for the week. They were to read through the National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) as well as the Virginia Educational Technology Plan and one local EdTech Plan. I decided to model the use of Padlet. When we got into the the discussion about the EdTech Plans we started with the NETP.

I shared my screen and brought up the web site for the plan and asked what students thought...CRICKETS...then one brave voice and then a second and then...CRICKETS.

So, we moved on the the Virginia plan but this time I introduced Padlet. I again shared my screen and gave a short demonstration of how to add a tile and submit simple text to the Padlet. I put the link in the chat window and had everyone take about 15 minutes to revisit the Virginia plan and then post their thought on one of the plan's goals. After successfully posting I then went back to the video feed in ZOOM, went down through the Padlet submissions and ask each person to elaborate on what they had posted. Check out the Padlet.

The Outcome

The posts were good representations of the content. In a short time, as I watched the posts appear on screen, I could tell there was familiarity among the group with the goals and objectives spelled out within the plan. When each person spoke about why they chose the topic and what it meant to them as a teacher or a learner, the conversation became rich and informative. Each person connected what was in the plan to personal experiences that brought a deeper meaning to the goals of the plan and what that looked like in real life. Each spoke with conviction about what they needed as a learner and what they hoped to achieve as a teacher. 

Zoom Journey

As far as my learning curve with Zoom...I felt more comfortable switching back and forth between screen sharing and the video feed. The participants were more comfortable with opening up the mic and with muting both the mic and the video when appropriate. I gave several breaks in the class session to allow participants to complete other tasks and that seemed to go well. The transitions back and forth were fairly smooth. I was even able to include the chat window submissions for those without a microphone and add their contributions to the conversation. I was also able to utilize the Zoom session to provide some one on one support after the class ended. It took a while for the video to render so I could post it to Canvas. That gave me some time to update the canvas page for the coming week.

For next week, I need to pay attention to pausing the video during the breakout work and then at the end when I meet with students to shorten the video and clean up the dead air and close the video as the class closes. I would like to edit out some parts like the demonstrations of different EdTech tools or some of the dialogue that I mentioned above. Perhaps that will come later in the semester.

See you next week!