I have been wracking my brain for the best subject to focus on for the digital learning course. I bounced back and forth between a digital book club/novel study, arts education semester, and finally settled on looking at Water Systems for grade 8 science as that is my upcoming unit for science. If we do end up moving online, having this resource available will be both beneficial to my classroom, and also have the experience to create quality course content for other subjects, should a “pivot” happen again.
| Subject: | Description: |
| Target Audience | The Target audience for this course is my current grade 7/8 classroom for a majority English speaking students in a relatively affluent neighbourhood in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. |
| Course Format (blended/online, synchronous/asynchronous, etc.) | This course will be designed to be Online with synchronous and asynchronous components using a consecutive hybrid model where all online modes are recorded for asynchronous purposes, while in person is mandatory. |
| course toolset (e.g. platform as well as instructional, communication, and assessment tools) | The Ed Tech apps we will use are: MS Teams OneNote A variety of online apps for formative and summative assessment SeeSaw |
| Course content and learning objectives | Earth and Space Science: Water Systems on Earth “Outcomes WS8.1 Analyze the impact of natural and human-induced changes to the characteristics and distribution of water in local, regional, and national ecosystems. WS8.2 Examine how wind, water, and ice have shaped and continue to shape the Canadian landscape. WS8.3 Analyze natural factors and human practices that affect productivity and species distribution in marine and fresh water environments.” Source |
| assessment strategies | Assessment will have a participation component as well as a variety of formative and summative activities (quizziz, culminating activity in Minecraft EDU, and reflection/concise writing prompts completed on OneNote) |
| considerations for common concerns | Wifi connection/bandwidth issues Addressing attendance concerns My EAL students are more than capable of completing tasks assigned to the whole class and will be graded according to their ROAs |
My goal is to create PowerPoints for direct instruction, group work for reading and representing texts, writing tasks to include ELA outcomes, and have interactive activities and videos that supplement the learning.
Let me know if you have any experience creating this type of course! I would love to hear your thoughts and criticisms. This is just a rough outline of where I would like the course to go, so any feedback is greatly appreciated and welcomed!
Dalton Danaher 
Hey Dalton – like we discussed in our breakout room we should definitely pull off a straight up course for course tradesies as my trio is working to creating a Grade 8 Cell based course! One thing that I feel can be a new and unique assessment strategy for students would be creating blogs for the purpose of expressing their understanding of topics by responding to prompts. For our unit, we are planning to use blogs, but we are going to use Google Sites as it seems to be more student friendly and easier to use. I am looking forward to seeing how your course takes shape.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I just did blogging and Twitter/TikTok with my students for my class with Alec last semester! The blogging was a great tool to use for assessment and had great results from my students! I hope you have the same results!
LikeLike
I am looking forward to checking out your course! I have heard a lot of awesome reviews of Minecraft Edu, but have not seen how that works. It will be a great addition.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dalton, I really like the thought of creating a course that can be effectively implemented both synchronously and asynchronously. In my teaching, I feel that I am often me best in the moment, so recording a creating pieces like that to post is a hurdle I need to get over haha. I noticed you are using MS Teams, is that the required LMS in your school division?
Scott
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hey Scott thanks for the comment. Yes, we use Teams and O365 so I am going to stick with that as it will be most beneficial to me. I wish we had a better platform (we do have SeeSaw but I really do not care for that app, and we are moving to Edsby next year!) but for now I will stick with Teams. I am not looking forward to doing recordings of myself either. Not a fan of that part of it, but alas! Tis the nature of the beast!
LikeLike
Hey Dalton,
I am really curious how you are going to use Minecraft as an assessment tool! I have tried this once and it was a huge flop. LOL. Honestly, I do not know Minecraft very well, and this led to my demise. What do you think they will create for you to assess?
Brianne
LikeLike
We are looking at water systems and ecosystems in Science so I would like them to create a healthy and unhealthy water ecosystem using Minecraft. I think they’ll be able to be successful in depicting their habitat after some research and planning time. Probably in groups! All of my students have 1:1 devices so that saves a lot of headaches right there!
LikeLike