I can’t believe we have reached the end of this course creation. It feels like it went by quickly and there is so much more to learn and do. Of course we have more outcomes and lessons to add to your unit but with the help of my partner Miranda, things came together pretty smoothly. As previously mentioned, we chose to use Google Classroom. It is the large management system that Prairie South School Division uses and we are both familiar with. Miranda is currently teaching fully online for our division and I am away on maternity leave. Her experience far outweighed mine when it came to navigating google classroom. Miranda’s ability to unit plan and create an organized skeleton for our project amazed me. Within minutes she had the outline for our course set up. Together we came up with four lessons to create an enjoyable learning experience for our students even tho it was all being done online. We created activities for our students that they could do at home with the supplies that are likely found at home. We used a variety of tools such as flipgrid, flippity, goformative, parlay, edpuzzle and google slides. We kept a consistent flow to our course so the students would pick up a routine and navigate through each assignment easily. For us, google classroom is a clean and easy way to teach online. It works well for students of all ages and abilities. We hope you enjoy exploring our course as much as we enjoyed making it.
The overall process of creating this course was pretty great. I have always admired Miranda for her ability to plan and keep things so neat and organized. This was a great way to see into the way she thinks and sees things. I think some of my favourite moments this semester came during our zoom calls where we talked about what we would do and then often got side tracked talking about life. It made me realize how much I miss working with her. I also loved that I got to learn more about how google classroom worked. I was challenged to try and create some activities for students using tools/programs that were new to me. It has now provided me with the confidence to bring some of these tools into my classroom when I go back in the fall. Google classroom used to seem so complicated to me but now with the organization of our course I find it simple. The way we used bookmarks for lessons and clipboards for assignments made sense to me and I think it will for parents and students too. I liked that the navigation tabs between announcements, classwork and people are clearly organized at the top of the page. It keeps important things separate and clean. I liked that there is a way for students to interact with the teacher and their class both as a group and privately. The announcements page is a great way to keep everyone in the loop with upcoming zoom calls or assignments that are due. Overall, I see myself using google classroom more now that I have had this experience! If you want to check it out please use the codes below!
Google Classroom Access code : yrn4fye
Goformative Access Code: WN5VV9
I wanted to play around with Screen Cast so I went ahead and made a video of our online course. Feel free to check it out.
Jocelyn Wigmore and the Blog of Teaching Secrets 
This is great! I chose to use Google Classroom as well. I am currently teaching this unit and can’t wait to “borrow” some of your modules 🙂 I really like your flippity game. I am going to research that more. Great job on incorporating so many different engaging apps/websites.
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It looks like you both put in a lot of effort, as well as time into your course. I like how you provided an insight into your course using a video. A lot of the materials that you made wouldn’t necessarily be posted for the kiddos, however, more for the teachers. So it was nice to see the behind-the-scenes as well as what your Google Classroom looks like. After putting it to the test online with the kiddos, did you find anything that you maybe would have changed or done differently? Or is there anywhere you felt like you missed the mark on, and want to add something? I love how you have been able to somewhat put this unit to practice. I would love to hear how it went/how it is going. I also am excited to see it more next class!
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Jocelyn, thanks so much for sharing your course. It looks well organized and like you have included a variety of assignment and activity types that will work well for students. I especially liked the Flippity activities as exit slips. They were fun and engaging ways to both improve on and assess understanding they provided a nice opportunity for visual and auditory learning. I also appreciated your reflection on the benefits of creating this course collaboratively. I learned so much from all of you in ECI834 and feel that creating a course with someone else would be a strong benefit for personal learning which you reflect. Maybe I will go outside of my comfort zone and do that next time.
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